Let's open this morning's service
with hymn number 62 in our hardback timbrel, number 62. Let's all
stand together. him with many crowns, the Lamb
upon his throne. Hark how the heavenly anthem
drowns all music but its own. Awake, my soul, and sing of him
who died for thee, and hail him as thy matchless King through
all eternity. crowned him the Lord of love. Behold his hands and side, rich
wounds yet visible above, in beauty glorified. No angel in the sky can fully
bear that sight, but downward bends his wandering eye at mystery
so bright. Crown him the Lord of life, who
triumphed o'er the grave, who rose victorious to the strife
for those he came to save. His glories now we sing, Who
died and rose on high, Who died eternal life to bring, And lives
that death may die. Crown him the Lord of heaven,
one with the Father known, one with the Spirit through him given
from yonder glorious throne. To thee be endless praise, For
thou for us hast died. Be thou, O Lord, through endless
days Adored and magnified. Please be seated. Good morning. Let's bow our heads
together and ask the Lord to enable us to
do what we just sang, crown him the Lord of life, our heavenly
father. We're so very thankful for your
precious promises. We hang all the hopes of our
salvation on the faithfulness of your word and yourself and
your dear son, the Lord Jesus Christ, who was successful in
the redemption of all of your people. Lord, we ask that you
would send your spirit and power and that you would enable us
this morning to do what we just sang, We know that we do not
make the Lord Jesus Christ Lord. You've already done that. The
Lord might we have the grace in our hearts to see him as Lord,
to crown him as Lord, to bow to him and to worship him and
to love him as Lord. Thank you for your word. Thank
you for pointing us to Christ through it. Father, we pray for those that
you have afflicted. We pray for Jeanette and for
Donnie and ask Lord that you would comfort their hearts, especially
this morning as they wait on you. And Lord, we pray for your
hand of strength and healing to be upon Jeanette. We pray
for our dear brother, Dee Parks, and ask, Lord, that you would
give hope and grace and comfort in that church and in that home. Lord, we pray for our brethren
in Ole, Pennsylvania, and we pray for Caleb as he brings the
gospel to them this morning. We ask, Lord, that you would
continue to knit their hearts together and that you would pour
out your spirit of grace there and that you would bless your
gospel and call out your lost sheep and to be glorified in the gospel
work there. We ask it in Christ's name, amen. If you'd like to open your Bibles
with me to John chapter five, John chapter five. I've titled this message Sovereign
Mercy. Sovereign Mercy. The Lord himself
said, I will have mercy upon whom I will have mercy. Salvation is of the Lord. It's
all of his grace. It's all of his choosing. We
don't choose him. He said, you did not choose me.
I chose you. And I want to remind us that
that sovereign mercy is the only open door that there is to heaven. You know, sometimes in the little
acrostic that we use, tulip, T-U-L-I-P, we refer to the atonement
of the Lord Jesus Christ as limited. And it is. It is. It is limited to God's elect. That's sovereign mercy. But a
better way to express the work that the Lord Jesus Christ accomplished
on Calvary's cross is particular redemption. The word limited
has a connotation to the unbeliever that might suggest, well, this
isn't fair, this isn't right, there's no hope for me. The fact
that the Lord Jesus Christ died for his elect and secured the
salvation of his particular people makes his redemptive work the
only hope of salvation for anyone. Election, sovereign mercy, particular
redemption, limited atonement is not a closed door. It's not
a closed door. It is the only open door that
there is to heaven. And if the Lord did not sovereignly
choose a particular people, if he did not particularly redeem
those particular individuals, no one would be saved. Now, in
our story in John chapter 5, we have the event of our Lord
going to the pool of Bethesda there in Jerusalem. And the scripture
says that there were people that were halt and lame and blind,
and they were all waiting for the stirring of the water. There
was a multitude of people there. Matter of fact, after the Lord
had taken this one individual man who had been laying for 38
years and healed him, the scripture says they started looking for
him and he had disappeared in the crowd for there was a multitude
of people there. So we see in this story how if
the Lord had not healed that one man, no one would have been
healed. It's sovereign mercy, but it
is mercy, and it will cause those who need mercy to beg for mercy. to plead for mercy, to look to
him for the cause of all their mercy. Lord, you're not going
to find anything in me that will move you to show mercy toward
me. If you don't do it sovereignly,
if you don't do it according to your will, we're like that
leper who comes before the Lord. Lord, we know that you can if
you will. You can, if you will. Let the
rest of the world say, well, God wills to save every man,
but he can't unless they let him have his way. That is a lie
from the pit of hell. It is not true. It strips God
of his glory. It makes salvation a work, and
it is simply not true. So, child of God, there is an
open door. It's sovereign mercy. On Wednesday
nights, we've been looking at the seven miracles in the gospel
of John that John frames his gospel message around. And the
first one is it found in John chapter two, the changing
of the water into wine at the feast at Cana. And in that, We
see a picture of who the Lord Jesus Christ is and what he came
to do in the fullness of time. Now, John begins his gospel with,
in the beginning was the Word, in John chapter 1 verse 1. And
the Word was with God and the Word was God. And the word was
made flesh and he dwelt among us and we beheld his glory as
the glory of the only begotten of the father, full of grace
and full of truth. And so John now is revealing
the Lord Jesus Christ as the living word of God. And in that
first miracle, he shows us how the Lord Jesus Christ timing
It was perfect in coming to fulfill all the promises that have been
made of him from the beginning of time. And the second miracle. We had the healing of the nobleman's
son in John chapter 4, and we see in that miracle the nature
of saving faith and the authority of the Word of God to speak a
word. And healing came as a result
of his spoken word. In this third miracle, we see
the sovereignty of the Word of God, the sovereignty of Christ
and of His grace and of His mercy. Let's begin reading in verse
one of chapter five. After this, there was a feast
of the Jews and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now John is the
only of the four gospel writers that mentions the Passover four
times. We know from the Gospel of John
that the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ covered four Passovers,
three and a half years. The first Passover was the changing
of the water into wine. The second is in John chapter
four, this is the third. And the fourth Passover will
be found in John chapter 18, when the Lord Jesus Christ died
as our Passover lamb. God said, when I see the blood,
I will pass over you. The Lord Jesus Christ is that perfect lamb of God, which taketh
away the sins of the world. And John is showing us, this
is actually, I'm sorry, I misspoke. This is actually the second Passover.
The third Passover is found in John chapter six at the feeding
of the 5,000. And the fourth Passover is in John chapter 18,
when our Lord, as the Passover lamb celebrated the Passover
with his disciples the night before he was crucified. And so, our Lord is the fulfillment
of the Passover. After this, there was a feast
of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. All the Passovers
his entire life, he went up to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover,
to observe the Passover. These Old Testament Passovers
were all pointing to him as the fulfillment of the Passover lamb. And that's why at the Last Supper,
the Lord took that Passover celebration and reduced it down to the bread
and the wine. And so when we celebrate the
Lord's table, we are observing the Passover, the Lord Jesus
Christ as that as that unleavened bread, a sinless sacrifice made
for our sins, and the wine being his shed blood, which is the
only covering for our sins. Verse 2, now there is at Jerusalem
by the sheep market, now perhaps you have in your Bible a reference
letting you know that that word market is really the word gate.
It is the sheep gate going into the city of Jerusalem. It was
near the Pool of Bethesda, but the Jews had turned it into a
market. The first Passover that the Lord
observes is in John chapter two, when he cleanses the temple. You remember, he made the whips
of cords and chased out the money changers. They had taken, this
is where they kept the sacrificial animals. Old Testament church,
it was a bloody religion. There was never an end to the
sacrificing of animals in the temple. And just the killing
of animals and the cleaning up of the slaying of animals and
the offering of animals was a constant work in the Old Testament. And there would have been a pin,
I'm sure, for keeping those animals at the sheep gate. And what the
Jews would do is you would bring in your sacrificial animal, and
they would inspect it, the money changers, and say, well, that's
not really sufficient. It doesn't meet the criteria. And so they would require you
to buy one of theirs. And of course, they would take
yours and sell it to somebody else. And it's a picture of works
religion. You know that Christ isn't enough
for your salvation. You've got to purchase favor
with God by something that you do. And so this is where this
took place. And it reminds us of who the
Lord Jesus Christ is. John said, behold, the Lamb of
God, which taketh away the sins of the world. He is that Passover
Lamb that is without spot and without blemish. He is the Lamb
of God. And when he shed his precious
blood on Calvary's cross, there was no more need for a sacrifice
after that. All those bloody sacrifices of
the Old Testament pointed to what he would fulfill by the
sacrifice of himself in putting away our sins. None of those
sacrifices in the Old Testament ever put away one's sin. believers
looked through that sacrifice to see that there was a Messiah
coming and he would be successful in putting away our sin. And
so those were shadows and types. We don't practice those shadows
and types anymore. We have the substance. I remember
hearing an illustration one time where A man said, you know, you
wouldn't try to sit down on the shadow of a chair. It wouldn't
work. You would just fall to the ground,
wouldn't you? But, you know, so many people do that now. They
try to resurrect those Old Testament types and shadows. That's all
they were. We have the substance. We have
the chair now. we have a place where we can
sit and rest our souls in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ,
who fulfilled all those types and shadows. So here we have
this sheep gate or sheep market, and it reminds us how the Lord
Jesus Christ, as the Lamb of God, opened not his mouth, but
as a lamb who went to the slaughter, he didn't object to laying down
his life for his sheep, for his children, for his people. And
what a What a glorious picture we have. You say, well, why didn't
he object? Well, first of all, he bore the
sins of his people in his body upon the tree, and he owned those
sins as his own. Without ever having been guilty
of those sins, he experienced the shame and the separation
from God for those sins. That's the That's the consequence
of sin, being forsaken of God, being made a curse. and being
separated from God. That's the result of sin. In
the day in which you eat of this fruit, you shall surely die.
The wages of sin is death. The Lord Jesus Christ experienced
that spiritual separation from his Father. Surely there is a
mystery involved in what happened on Calvary's cross with the Lord
Jesus Christ being made sin that we cannot understand. God made him sin. Who knew no
sin? He was without sin of his own,
but somehow, somehow when he bore our sin, he knew the shame
and the guilt and the death and the separation, not talking about
just physical death, but spiritual death, unlike you and I could
never know, never know. And he satisfied the justice
of God by the sacrifice of himself. So here we have the lamb going
to the cross and opening up not his mouth. Number one, because
he had no objection. He owned that sin as his own. I'm not going to say he was guilty
because guilt involves commission, but whatever he experienced in
terms of shame and separation, he had no objection to make. Then we have also here at this
sheep market, a pool. Now, if you remember in John
chapter nine, when the Lord made mud from spittle and put it on
the eyes of a blind man and told him to go to the pool of Shalom
and wash, which by translation, the Bible says means sent. And so God sent him to a pool
of water They tell us that this water that was in the pool of
Bethesda came from that pool of Shalom. So the word Bethesda
is very similar to the word Bethel. Bethel meaning the house of God
and Bethesda meaning the house of mercy. This is where we're
getting our message from this morning. Sovereign mercy. And this pool of water is the
word of God, not just the living word, the Lord Jesus Christ himself,
but the written word, the written word, the scriptures, which all
point to him. The Bible is not just a book
of doctrine and history and theology and tools to be used to try to
improve your life. The Bible is a revelation of
the Lord Jesus Christ. In the volume of the book, it
is written of me. And beginning with Moses and
the Psalms and the prophets, he expounds unto us those things
concerning himself. So this pool is a picture of
that. They were waiting for the angel
to come and stir the water. And the first one into the pool
after the water had been stirred would be healed. Let's read on. Well, in Isaiah chapter six,
Isaiah chapter eight, verse six, this people, Isaiah is pronouncing
judgment against Israel as the prophet of God. And he says,
this people, these Old Testament Israelites who refuse to believe
God, this people refuse the water of Shiloh, which is soft. It's what the Bible says, it
flows softly. Men don't want a salvation that
doesn't cost them anything. Men, that verse in Isaiah chapter
eight, verse six says, this people refuses the water of Shiloh that
goeth softly and rejoice in Regan, which means firm or hard. Men would prefer a hard gospel
over an easy one. They want works, not grace. They
want something that they can do in order to earn favor with
God. This water flows softly. This is the still small voice
of God that speaks to the heart. But these people prefer Regan,
they prefer something hard, something difficult. Give me something
to do. Give me some sacrifice to make.
Give me some works to perform. Give me a prayer to pray. Give
me a decision to make. Give me something that I can
do to earn favor with God. These people refuse the waters
of Shiloh, which go softly. You remember in Psalm 23, When
David says, when he's talking about the Lord being his shepherd,
and he says, he leadeth me beside the still waters. You know, sheep,
I understand, don't swim. And so, and they're very timid. And so they won't drink from
a river that's got rushing water or moving water in it in fear
that they might slip in and drown. And so the shepherd would have
to go to the edge of the river and cut a little canal to bring
some water off of that river into a pool and there they could
drink. What a beautiful picture of this
water of Shiloh, this pool of Bethesda. The Lord's not going
to let us do anything hard to earn his favor. He's already
done the hard work. He did all the hard work. He
kept the law. He was obedient unto death. The obedience of the Lord Jesus
Christ, being the end of the law for righteousness to everyone
that believeth, was active and it was passive. It was active
in that he actively obeyed every word of God. He said, I did not
come to destroy the law. I came to fulfill it. And it
was passive in that when he hung on Calvary's cross, bearing our
sins, the law charged him and slew him. That's why the Bible
says it pleased God to bruise him. The justice of God, when
seeing sin on the Lord Jesus Christ, had no choice but to
slay him. And so the Lord Jesus Christ
was obedient, even unto death, yea, even the death of the cross. His obedience was active and
his obedience was passive. And he's done, he's done all
the hard work. Zacharias says, a fountain has
been opened for sin and for uncleanness. This is the fountain that's drawn
from Emmanuel's veins. This is the blood of the Lord
Jesus Christ. You know, what God is saying
to me and you is, stop trying and start trusting. You know,
men just want to try to do something. Now surely, what must I do to
inherit eternal life? What work can I do to work the
works of God? This is the work of God, that
you believe on Him whom He has sent. And that's not you doing
the work of God, that's the work of God in you. To believe. Remember last Sunday? Some believed
passive and some believed not active. They took an active role
in their disobedience against God. To believe is a work of
grace in the heart. This is the work of God that
you believe on him whom he has sent. This is the still waters
of Shiloh. This is the pool of Bethesda.
This is the word of God washed by the water of his word. which
reveals the living word, the Lord Jesus Christ. Bethesda. We see Jewish synagogues
around our town, and oftentimes they will start with the word
Beth, which is the Hebrew for house. And this is the house
of mercy. And this, I pray, is the house
of mercy. This is where mercy beggars come,
needing mercy. Lord, I can't do anything to
work out my salvation. I can't earn your favor. I can't work my way to heaven.
I can't make up for my sin. I need mercy. Mercy. The church is the house of God,
Bethel, but it's also the house of mercy, Bethesda. Let's read
on. Let's continue to read on. And
they had five porches. The number five is the number
in the Bible for grace. You see it over and over again.
We won't mention those, but that's the number five. You can look
it up. Five is the number for grace. And That's how we're saved. We're
saved by God's grace. We're saved because He delights
in showing mercy. We're saved because redemption
is particular. We're saved because He has opened
one door into heaven, and that door is the Lord Jesus Christ
Himself. In these lay a great multitude
of folk, a great multitude. Here's the world. Here's all
mankind halt, lame, blind, uh, blind, halt, withered, waiting
on the moving of the water. Now there's nothing in the Bible
to suggest, when I was years ago in religion and in school,
I was taught that this was some sort of Jewish tradition or superstition. There's no indication of that
in the Bible. Matter of fact, there's this man says when the
water stirred, someone else gets in front of me and they get healed.
So the Lord was doing something here. That's, that's, that's
miraculous. And, um, and every how often
we don't know, but, uh, but the Lord would send an angel and
stir the water. And the first one in came out
healed. And this man. was crippled. And
so he said, when the water stirred, I have no way to get to it. And
someone else gets in before me. Waiting for the moving of the
water. Look at verse four. For an angel went down at certain
season into the pool and troubled the water. Whosoever then first,
after the troubling of the water, stepped in was made whole. Whatsoever disease
he had. Uh, here's the, here's the work
of the Spirit of God. I pray right now that, you know,
an angel in the Bible is just a messenger. It's just a messenger.
And in the book of Revelation, the gospel preachers are referred
to as angels. They're just bringing the word
of God, just audibly voicing the word of God. I pray the water
is being stirred right now. But even as it is, that's all
we can do. All we can do is connect scripture
to scripture, speak the truth, declare who Christ is and what
he's accomplished. It's the Lord himself. It's the Holy Spirit that has
to stir the heart. That's why when the prophet Ezekiel
was preaching that valley of dry bones, here's the whole world,
halt, blind, withered, waiting for the moving of the water.
And the Lord said, son of man, can these bones live? And you
remember what Ezekiel said, Lord, thou knowest if they're gonna
live, you're gonna have to make them live. I can't make them live. Prophesy
to them, preach the gospel to them, stir the water. And things
started happening. Bone came to bone and sinew and
flesh. And the Bible says, yet there
was no life in them, no life. And so the Lord said, prophesy
to the wind, pray to the wind of God, the Holy Spirit to come
and stir the heart and apply the truth. And the first one
in will be made whole, will be healed. Oh, I pray, I pray the
Lord will do that. Psalm 72 says, he shall come
down like rain upon the moon grass. As the showers that water
the earth, in his day shall righteousness flourish and the abundance of
peace. He shall have dominion also from
sea to sea and from river, even to the ends of the earth. Here's the Lord stirring the
water of his word. He's the one that has dominion.
He's the one that shows grace and mercy. So he couldn't get in the water.
And verse five, and a certain man was there, which had an infirmity
30 and eight years. And when Jesus saw him lie and
knew that he'd been now a long time in that case, he saith unto
him, wilt thou be made whole? What a powerful question. Let those words Ask the Lord
to apply those words to your heart, to your heart. I've asked
him to do it to me. Wilt thou be made whole? Now notice what he says, the
impotent man answered, sir, I have no man when the water is troubled
to put me into the pool, but while I am coming, another step
down before me. What was he saying? You know,
I just need a little help from somebody. I just need a little relief. You know, I can do this. I know
if I just had some help, I could do this myself. I just need a
little assistance. Maybe I, here's the application
of this, brethren. God says, wilt thou be made whole? The temptation of our hearts,
our minds, our old man is the same as that of the unbeliever.
You know, maybe I just need to step up my religious activity
a little bit. Maybe I just need a little help.
I need a preacher to tell me some things about the Bible.
I need to go to a class so I can get someone to help me to overcome
a bad habit or, you know, maybe I just need to pray more. Maybe
I just need to read my Bible more. I just need a little help. I
can fix this. I can fix this if I just had
someone to help me. No, you can't. You might be able to patch up
a wound, but we can't save ourselves. And no man can help us to be
saved. There's not a man on this earth.
There's no activity. There's no turning over a new
leaf. There's no washing the outside
of the cup or whitewashing the tomb that's going to get rid
of the dead man's bones that are in us or the corruption that's
in us. That's a work of grace that has
to be done by the Spirit of God. Wilt thou be made whole? Wilt thou, do you have a desire
to stand perfect in the sight of God with no sin whatsoever? Or do you just want the sins
that are bothering you to get cleaned up a little bit? You
see the difference? A huge difference. Wilt thou
be made whole, perfect, sinless, saved, redeemed, converted in
the sight of God? Or do you just wanna use God
to help you improve your life a little bit here? Hell's gonna be filled with well-intended,
outwardly moral people who have spent their lives going to church
and reading the Bible and praying and doing everything they can.
Why? Because they had no interest
in being made whole. They had no interest in knowing
the Lord Jesus Christ. They just wanted God to patch
up their holy garment. And what did the Lord say? He
said, if you have a hole in your garment, you don't patch it up
with a new piece of garment. And you can imagine, you've got
a hole, you take a new piece of unshrunk fabric. And let me say that I used to
work in textiles, so I know that every piece of fabric that we
wear is pre-shrunk. When after it's knit, after it's
made, they have to heat it and shrink it before they can make
a garment out of it. Otherwise you make a garment
out of new fabric and it's going to be a whole lot smaller than
it was when they made it originally. Okay? So you don't take a new
piece of fabric and put it on a hole. What's going to happen
as soon as that thing's washed, that new piece of fabric shrinks.
What's that? The hole's bigger than it was.
But that's what religion does. It just packs it up, the old
garment. And here's what the Lord is saying
to me and you. You want to patch up your old garment or are you
going to be like blind Bartimaeus and throw that thing down on
the ground and come to the Lord Jesus Christ for his righteousness,
for his salvation, for his covering. Wilt thou be made whole? That's a powerful question, isn't
it? Because the majority of people
are going to say exactly what this man, well, you know, if
I just had somebody to help me, I could do this. I could do this. Might the Lord. Convict us of our inability to
do it. Lord, I can't believe unless
you give me faith to believe. I can't. I can't atone for one
single sin in my life. I can't patch up this old garment.
I need to be made whole. I need to be made perfect. I
need Christ. I've got to have him. I can't
settle for anything less. And all the self-helps and all
the religious trinkets are not gonna help me. Wilt thou be made
whole? The Lord ask powerful questions. And the Lord himself is called
Jehovah Rapha. I am the God who heals by his
stripes. By his stripes, we are healed,
made whole, complete. There's no place in the Bible
where God promises his children health, wealth, and prosperity
in this life. That's not what we're talking
about. We're talking about spiritual healing. I mean, we all love
health, wealth, and prosperity, and we spend a lot of our time
pursuing it and praying for it, but we're talking about spiritual
healing. Whatever physical healing God
gives us, it's going to be temporary, isn't it? It's going to be temporary. We're praying for you right now,
Jeanette, the Lord would be pleased to put his hand on you. Give
us more time here with you. We have a brother in the church
in Nashville, Tennessee. I mentioned the other day, Dee
Parks, he used to go here. And Dee, they've given him no
hope and they've tried treatments and they're not working. And
he's at peace with God. He's sad that he has to leave
his wife and children church, but this is what we're talking
about being made whole. Because whatever healing we get
in this world, it's only going to be temporary. One day soon,
there's going to be something that's going to get ahold of
us that we're that God's not going to relieve us of. And it's going
to take us out of this world. And that's going to happen a
lot sooner than we think. We're talking about being made whole. Being made perfect. That's what
we need. That's what we need. What does
it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own
soul? Here's what the, here's what
Christ came to do. He came to save sinners. Lord, I need every sin to be
covered. I need all the penalty of my sin to be paid for, not
in part, but in whole. And he put away our sins by the
sacrifice of himself once and for all. If God should mark iniquity,
who shall stand? And you know what that means? The sin that we haven't even
taken notice of. Not the stuff that bothers us,
but the stuff that we haven't even taken notice of. How about what we're doing right
now? There's enough sin in what we're doing right now to send
us all to hell. And if God should mark the iniquity
that's involved in what we're doing right this very minute,
who shall stand? No one. That's what I'm talking
about being made whole. Lord, I need all my sin taken
away. The stuff that bothers me and
the secret sin that I, you know, that David said, Lord, forgive
me of my presumptuous sins. We presume upon God all the time,
don't we? We would just presume that we're gonna go home and
have lunch or go out and have dinner or we're gonna, you know,
sun's gonna come up tomorrow and we make our plans and everything. We presume, don't we? How often
do we really wake up with the idea that James tells us to do? If it be the Lord will, we will
do this or that and go here or there and buy and sell. Oh, here's the good news, brethren. What the Lord Jesus Christ accomplished
on Calvary's cross was the putting away of all the sins of all of
his people, past sins, present sins, future sins. If it were
not so, we would have no hope. Lord, I need to be made whole.
I need to be found in Christ. I've spent enough of my time
and energy trying to patch up my life, trying to fix this and
fix that. Lord, I need to be saved. I need
to be made whole. Will thou be made whole? There's another very important
part to this story, but I think I'm going to keep it for another
message. It's where the Lord tells this
man, I'll just maybe introduce it to you. Afterwards, Jesus
findeth him in the temple and said unto him, verse 14, behold,
thou art made whole. sin no more, lest a worse thing
come upon thee." Well, I can't leave it at that, can
I? I can't leave it at that. James says, in many things, we
offend all. I've already made the point that
what we're doing right now has got enough sin in it to send
us to hell. So the Lord's not saying to this man, be without
sin, sin no more, unless you go to hell. You can't lose. If you've been made whole, you
can't ever, you can't ever go to hell. And so many people read
this and they say, well, you see the Lord saying, you know,
you got to walk the straight and narrow now and be without
sin or you're going to lose what the Lord's given you and you're
going to end up in hell. That is not what's being said here.
The scriptures are clear. If we say that we have no sin,
we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. We're always
sinning. We always have a sin nature with
us. Paul said, when I would do good,
evil is ever present with me. Oh, to will is present with me. I
desire to be without sin, and one day I will be. But how to
perform that which is good, I find not. So the Lord's not saying
to us, okay, I've made you whole, I saved you. Now go and sin no
more, unless you go to hell. That's not what he's saying.
What does he say? Well, child of God, let me ask
you this. What is worse to your soul than physical pain and physical
suffering? What is worse to your soul? It's the shame and the guilt
and the separation that you feel when you sin. The Lord is just
warning us here. Be careful for sin. David wrote Psalm 51. Oh, he
was agonizing from his soul over sin. When Job groaned, he said,
the terrors of God have set themselves against me. Peter said, I go fishing. There's no more hope the Lord
is going to have anything to do with me. What was he feeling? He was feeling the shame and
separation and guilt. You know what I'm talking about,
child of God. You know what I'm talking about. The agony, knowing
that you've sinned against the Lord. And the worst experience
that a believer has is not getting sick, Oftentimes, the physical
afflictions that the Lord sends only sweetens his grace to our
hearts. It's when we lose sight of that
grace. It's when sin gets between us and God. And the guilt and shame and agony
that comes as a result of that and the sorrow that we have over
having sinned against the Lord. That's what he's saying. There's
something worse than physical trials and troubles. And it's
the spiritual pain that comes to the soul as a result of sin. All right? Let's pray. Our heavenly Father,
bless your word. Bless the souls of your people
and Lord cause us to want to be made whole. We ask it in Christ's
name. Amen.