Turn to John chapter 5. The doctor gave me some cough
medicine. I mean, it is powerful stuff. I've never felt so loopy. But without it, I couldn't, I
wouldn't be able to be doing this this morning. John chapter 5, the subject this
morning is on sovereign This is a demonstration of the
sovereign mercy of our Lord in healing this crippled man.
It says, as Doug read there, there were many impotent folk
in that place, a multitude of them, many of them. Yet our Lord
goes directly to one man. He walks up to one man. And he asked him if he'd be made
whole. And after asking him that question, he made him whole.
He told him to rise up and walk. He heals him and he leaves. And
he leaves. Now there are many crippled folks
there, halt, it says, blind, halt, and waiting for that moving
of that water. You would think, you would think that those other
crippled or those other lame people, sick people, sick folk,
impotent folk, you would think seeing him jump up after 38 years. 38 years in that place. He's in that position. Conditioned
38 years, and I'm sure he was there for about that much, that
long. You would think that they would
have seen this and they would have said, Lord, have mercy here.
Wouldn't you? I need, I need my legs healed.
I need to see, I need, we don't read of one of them. Not one
of them asking the Lord for mercy, do we? And there'll not be one
person here this morning ask God for mercy unless God has
mercy on them. That's one of the things that
I realized early on when I heard the gospel, that God didn't have
to save me, that he had to have mercy on me before I would even
ask for mercy. Nobody else asked. That's astounding
to me. That's astounding. You know why?
They're still looking at the water. They're still looking
at that water waiting to see if it's troubled. They're not
paying attention to what really just happened. The Lord of glory,
the God of heaven and earth, walked up to that man and healed
him, saved him. And nobody else asks for mercy. And we won't. No sinner will
ever ask for mercy until God has mercy on them. They won't
do it. Now our Lord goes up to Jerusalem
to this feast, and He does so, and this is one of those things
you can read right over and not think a thing about it. Let me
read this to you in verse 1. After this there was a feast
of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. And then, typically,
and I do too, we just read right on, don't we? We don't even really
give a thought. You know if he doesn't go up to that feast,
we don't have a righteousness? Because that was a command of
the law, that the males, three times a year, went to these three
feasts. The Feast of Pentecost, the Feast
of the Passover, and the Feast of Tabernacles. If he does not,
if he does not go to this feast, we don't have a righteousness.
It's His obedience. His obedience to the law of going
up to that feast is our righteousness. It's His perfect obedience. In
the whole, the civil law, God's law, His perfect obedience to
the law is our righteousness. That verse is so powerful if
you really understand what's going on. He's going up there
in an act of obedience. And our righteousness is being
wrought out. So he goes up to this feast.
Now, it's called here the Feast of the Jews, but if you go back
in the Old Testament, it was called the Lord's Feast. Just
like the Passover was the Lord's Passover. This is how much it
degenerated. Now it's the Jews' feast. And
they went through it just like a dead ceremony. And I thought
about this, and I thought we must guard against such an attitude
that we don't do this Sunday after Sunday, Thursday after
Thursday, that we don't come with a lethargic, dead attitude
that this is what we do on Sunday. This is what we do. Let's guard
against that. They just went through the motions.
They just offered those sacrifices. They just cut them up and threw
them. Went through the motions, that's
all. Formality. God forbid this ever should just
become formality. This is a worship service. The
Lord said, "...where two or three are gathered together in My name,
there am I in the midst of them." We need to be here in our attitude,
especially this morning, that the Lord is here. He's here. I've got His Word. I'm reading
it to you. He's in His Word. Now he says here in verse 2,
and listen, every word of God has meaning. Nothing is just
a filler. There's no fillers in the Word
of God. There is at Jerusalem by the sheep market, that's a
sheep gate. There's a sheep gate, a pool, which is called in the
Hebrew tongue Bethesda, house of mercy. That's what it means. House of mercy. And there's one
there that's going to experience the mercy, the sovereign saving
mercy of God. And he wasn't even looking for
it. Didn't ask for it. Found it then, but sought me
not. And it had five porches. This gate, this sheep gate, is
where the sacrificial lambs were brought through. They came through
this gate. How fitting for the Lamb of God
to come through this gate. I tell you, God is so, He's so
minute in what He does. And in these lay a great multitude
of impotent folk, blind, halt, lame, withered, waiting for the
moving of the water, This is a true picture of Israel at that
time and to this day. To this day, this is still a
true picture of them. They are blind, halt, and withered. When
the Lord came, they received Him not. They turned thumbs down
on Him. They rejected the Lord of glory. But here's my question,
and this would be my question to anybody over there in Israel,
to that nation. If Jesus Christ is not the Messiah,
why are you not still shedding blood? Without shedding the blood,
there's no remission of sins. Why are you not still offering
the Passover? Why are you not still keeping
all these things? Why? If Christ is not, if He's
not the fulfillment, why are you not still doing these things? Christ is the fulfillment, and
He put them away, and He's not letting them do it. But this is a good picture of
them, but it's also a good picture of all those whom the Lord saves. We are spiritually blind. We
can't see how dead we are. You know, you'll never know that
you are spiritually dead till God makes you alive. You'll never
know you're lost till God saves you. You'll never know that.
You'll never know it. It's a very accurate picture
of everyone whom the Lord saves. Total, total inability to save
ourselves. This man was totally, he couldn't
even crawl down to the water fast enough to get in when the
water was troubled. He couldn't even get there fast
enough. He was so crippled. This is how crippled he was. It says here in verse 4, and
it says, For an angel went down at a certain season into the
pool, who entroubled the water. Whosoever then first, after the
troubling of the water, stepped in, was made whole of whatsoever
disease he had. I like what J.C. Ryle said about
this verse. He said, The best way to handle
this verse is just leave it where it is. Don't try to explain that. Just leave it alone. There are
just some things it can't explain. But here on one of these porches
by this pool, and you can imagine how crowded all of these sick
folks were. They're all jammed. I could see
them all jammed together, ready to jump into the pool. I mean,
it's like they'll knock each other down if they have to. Because
like he said, when I'm coming down to get in it, somebody jumps
in front of me. There's humanity for you. But
it says here in verse 5, "...and a certain man was there..." Boy,
how particular the Word of God is. The language is particular. "...a certain man was there which
had an infirmity thirty-eight years..." This is God's child.
"...and for thirty-eight years he lay there crippled." "...a certain man..." Salvation
is not a random act of kindness on God's part. It is not a random
act of kindness on God's part. Salvation is according to the
eternal will and purpose of God Almighty. God purposed that man's
salvation, his healing, before the world was created. In this verse, we see first of
all a particular man, we see sovereign mercy, but we also
see the effects of sin. This is the effect of sin. Sin is the root of all our problems. I'm sick this morning. I have
this bronchitis this morning. You know why I have bronchitis?
Sin. Yesterday I had an earache. I
had an earache because of sin. You have a headache because of
sin. Every problem I have is because of sin. You take a pill
for this and then something else pops up. Take it for that, something
else comes along. It's sin. Sin is the root of
all our problems. When you see that, you look at
that whole See a multitude of impotent folks. It's sin. The
hospitals, go to the hospital now. It's worse than it's ever
been, ever. You can never get in. If you
go to the emergency room, you wait forever. Because there
are so many sick people. I call my doctor. He said, almost
always, I can see you in four weeks. I told him last time,
I said, I'll be dead in four weeks. That's what I told him.
He said, I can see you in four weeks. I said, I'll probably
be dead in four weeks. You can't get in because there's so many
sick people. Why are we sick? Sin. Sin's the
root of it. Sin's the root of it. You pick
up an obituary. So-and-so died. You know, died
of a heart attack or he died. Those are just second causes.
heart attack or this or that, those are second causes. Sin's
the number one cause. By one man, sin entered the world,
and death by sin. You see, this sin issue has to
be taken care of. And the only one who can take
care of this sin issue is the Lord Jesus Christ. He's the only
one who can put it away. He's the only one who can take
the penalty of it away from us. And all those Impotent folks are sick because
of sin, and this man is sick because of sin. But our Lord,
in His sovereign mercy, is going to do something for this man.
He's going to do something for this man. He's going to do more
for this man than he could even imagine. And I want you to see here in
verse 6, first of all, I want you to see the Lord's foreknowledge.
his foreknowledge, when Jesus saw him lie. Now, he did, when
he walked up to that place, he saw that man lying there, but
he also saw a lot of others, didn't he? I mean, what was it
about this man that drew his attention more than the others
that were there? This one was his. This one he
loved. Why did He love this one? Because He loved him. I can't
explain the love of God. Even so, Father, it seemed good
in Thy sight. Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent
and revealed them to babes. Even so, Father, it seemed good
in Thy sight. Who am I to question God? God
is on a level that you and I are nowhere even close to being on
the level that God is on. He said, My thoughts are higher
than your thoughts, My ways higher than your ways. We can't even
think on that level. But we see here the Lord's foreknowledge.
He saw him lie and He knew. He knew that he'd been now a
long time in that case. Nobody told him that. We don't
read of someone coming up to Him and say, let me tell you
about so-and-so over here, he's been this way for 38 years. The
Lord knew that. He knew because He knew Him. Like He said to Jeremiah, before
I formed you in the belly, I knew you. This is more than just knowledge
of something, this is knowing someone. If you go in the Scriptures
and you read of the Lord's foreknowledge, when you read of foreknowledge,
every time it has to do with a person, not an event. Not an event. I know Arminianism
says that God looked down through time and He saw who would believe
and He chose them. He elected them. Foreknowledge
never has to do with an event. It always has to do with a person.
He foreknew a person. And He foreknew this man. He
was on the trail of His sheep. He's still on the trail of His
sheep. The Lord's still on the trail of His sheep. And so He goes after him. This man is on His heart. Just
imagine this. This is God. This is God Almighty. Jesus Christ is God Almighty.
And this poor, crippled beggar is on his heart. And he makes
this journey up there to Jerusalem, walks in the Sheep Gate. The
Lord of Glory, the God of heaven and earth, walks in the Sheep
Gate where the sacrificial lambs are brought. And he walks up
to this crippled man. Because this man is one of His
children. This man is one of His. And he's
on his heart. He's on his heart. When the priest
went in to the Holy of Holies, what did he have written on his
breastplate? The names of the children of Israel. This man's
name was on his heart, just like you who believe, your name's
on his heart. You're on the heart of God. Our
Lord thought upon this man. There was nothing about this
man that would draw his attention other than just this, the Lord
loved him. and was going to have mercy on
him. And the Lord saw him in his crippled
condition. He saw him in all his mess, just as He saw me and you in
the mess we were born into, grew up in, lived in, and would have
wallowed in until we died if He hadn't saved us. You'll never hear a pig ask you
to get it out of the mire. No pig will ever ask you to get
it out of the mire. It'll go right straight back
to it if you let it. Just like the dog returns to
its vomit. That sounds awful, doesn't it?
But that's what the Word of God says. That's what it says. But the Lord saw him in his crippled
condition. And the Lord knows, listen, He
knows that he's been that way for a long time. He knows we've been in our situation
for a long time. He was there when the fall happened,
in the beginning. We've been in this for a long
time. And he said unto him, the Lord
asked him a question, Wilt thou be made whole? You know, this
man didn't ask him anything. The Lord walks up to him. This
man doesn't know him from anybody. And the Lord walks up to him,
looks down at him, and says, would you be made whole? Well,
you know the obvious answer to that would be, of course. Of
course. But this man, here's what happens. The Lord's not asking for information.
God never asks for information. He's bringing out of this man
a confession, a recognition of his condition. That's what he's
doing. He's bringing out of this man
a confession of his helplessness and his hopelessness. Because
that's exactly where we are. We are helpless and hopeless
until God saves us. And here's his confession in
verse 7. And the impotent man answered
him, Sir, I have no man, I have no one to help me. This man,
he wasn't only crippled, he was friendless. and family-less. There was no family there, no
friends there, nobody. He was there all by himself,
all alone. I have no man when the waters
trouble to put me in the pool, but while I am coming, another
steps down before me. I have no helper. This shows
how bad his condition was. No one to help me. It also shows
the selfishness of humanity. While I'm coming, another steps
down before me. It's like jump in there before
he can get in there. And Satan knew this. Satan said to God
concerning Job, he said, skin for skin. Let me touch you. Let
me touch you. Let me take his health away.
Skin for skin. He'll curse you to your face.
He knows humanity. Apart from the grace of God,
yes, skin for skin. We take care of ourselves. We'll
look after ourselves first. We will. But what we see here now, what
we're going to see here, we're going to see the power of Christ
to save. But this power that our Lord demonstrates when He
saves the blind, gives them sight, and lame to walk, and the deaf
to hear, and He raises the dead, He's just demonstrating His deity.
This is God walking among us. This man is God. That's what
He's demonstrating. And that man said, I have no
man. I have no one. No one. Boy, that's when salvation
happens, when you have no one but Christ. When there's no one
but Jesus Christ to help you, to save you. If you can cling
on to a thread, Christ will profit you nothing. He says, I have
no one. And when he said that, the Lord
said to him, Jesus said unto him, Rise, take up thy bed, and
walk. With the power of His Word, the
man was given the power to believe, rise up and walk. Believe on
the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. You know, one
day that came to me in power. One day that came to me and I
believed. You know why I believed? Because God gave it to me. Listen
to this Scripture. Listen, faith is a gift of God.
It says in Colossians 2.12, that we are buried with Christ in
baptism, wherein ye are also risen with Him through the faith... Now listen, through the faith
of the operation of God. Faith is an operation of God.
Faith is the work of God. Ephesians 2.8, For by grace are
ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves? It's the gift
of God. Faith is the gift of God, it's
the operation of God. The Holy Spirit taking the Word
of God and creating faith in your heart. You know not how,
but all of a sudden, you believe. Whereas before that, you didn't. It didn't matter, you were indifferent.
You were really just indifferent. But now you believe. Lord, I
believe. Help thou mine unbelief. with the command, not the invitation. There's not an invitation here. He's not inviting him to walk.
He's not inviting him to rise up. He's commanding him to. And
with that command, you see where the word of the king is, there's
power. And the king sent out the word.
And he said, Rise up and walk, take up thy bed and walk. And
he did. He didn't say, Lord, I can't.
I've been this way for 38 years. Now listen, if he was there for
38 years, he had no muscles in his legs. You can lay in bed
for a week and it's hard to walk after you've laid down for a
week. But for 38 years, there's no
muscle structure in his legs. They're gone. But with the command, he was
healed. The Lord healed him. and gave him the ability to rise
up and walk, and he did so. He did so. He was commanded to
walk. First of all, this is not your
home anymore. You're not going to stay here anymore. But you
know what came with this command, rise up and walk? New responsibilities. He couldn't
lay there and beg now. He had responsibilities to do.
He had to go to work now. This man had to go get a job
now. He had to go to work. He had responsibilities. But here it is, he's to be a
living witness of the saving power of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord has no loiterers. He
has laborers. You have new responsibilities.
You and I are a living witness to the Lord Jesus Christ's saving
power, to His grace, His mercy, and His power to save. And He
says, walk. Let's walk with Him. Walk with
the Lord by faith. And immediately, immediately,
the man was made whole. The man was made whole, took
up his bed and walked on the same day with the Sabbath immediately.
You know, salvation, listen, salvation is immediate. It's
immediate. When God does save, when He saves
the sinner, it's immediate. Now, I know, listen, I know I
have been saved, I'm being saved, and I shall be saved. But salvation,
when God saves, it is immediate. It's immediate. And when he did this, listen,
when he did this, it made the Jews angry. Isn't that something? That's astounding. Here are the
ones who are supposed to know God. These are the ones who call
God their father. These are the ones who were the
religious leaders in town, and it made them mad. It made him
mad. The Jews therefore said to him
that was cured, It's the Sabbath day. It's not lawful for thee
to carry thy bed." It's the Sabbath day. It's the Lord's Sabbath.
It's the Lord's Sabbath day. And He's the Sabbath. The Lord
is the Sabbath. And He's Lord of the Sabbath.
He's not subject to the Sabbath. He's Lord of the Sabbath. And
if He tells you to walk on the Sabbath day, you walk. You do
what He says. That's what you do. You do what
he says. It shows how cold and mean religion is without Christ.
I'd rather be a drunk than be religious without Christ. I would.
At least I'd have a reason for my conduct. Then they asked him,
What man is that which said unto thee, Take up thy bed and walk?
Who is this man? And he that was healed wished
not who it was. He didn't know who it was. You
know salvation happens before you really know it. It does. Do you remember when
you were conceived? Don't say yes to that. You don't remember when you were
conceived. It could be right now that the seed, the Word of
God, is planted in the heart. Right now. It may not come to
fruit or be evident ten years down the road. It may be ten
years down the road. That seed may be planted now. And God give
the increase ten years down the road. We don't know. I know this, once
I was lost, now I'm found. Once I was blind, now I see.
This man didn't know who this man was, but the Lord knew who
he was. The Lord knew who he was. He didn't know who he was, let
me find my place here. But he said that... I'm trying
to find where I was at. "...he that made me whole, the
same said to me in verse 11, Take up thy bed and walk. And
they asked him, What man is he that said that? And he that was
healed wished not who it was, for Jesus had conveyed himself
away, a multitude being in that place." And notice here now,
notice, and I'm going to wind this up, in verse 14. Where, now, where did they find
him? Where did the Lord find him this time? The Lord found
him crippled, laying with a bunch of impotent folks, just there
by that pool, waiting, waiting for something to happen, waiting
for that water to be troubled, just waiting. You know where
the Lord found him now? In the temple. You're going to be found in the
house of God. If God saves you, you're going to be found with
His people. You're going to be found among the things of God,
among the people of God. You're going to be found among
the people of God. And afterward, Jesus findeth him in the temple,
and he said to him, Behold, thou art made whole. Sin no more.
God never approves of sin. This is sovereign mercy, sovereign
grace here that the Lord had on him. And he tells him, sin
no more. You know, when the Lord tells
me that, and I read that in the Scriptures, go and sin no more,
it makes me realize how much I need Jesus Christ. That's what
it makes me realize. It makes me realize my need of
Him more and more. And it's interesting how the
Lord came back to the temple and found this man, this cripple. Who is he? Who is He? I mean, who am I? Who am I that
God would give such attention to me? The Lord went back to
the temple and found Him, and made Himself known to Him, revealed
Himself to Him. And that man departed. He told
the Jews, it was Jesus which made me whole. He went and became
a witness of the Lord Jesus Christ. He gave Him the glory and the
honor for His healing. And the Jews, after that, they
sought to kill the Lord because He healed on the Sabbath day. Isn't that amazing? Instead of rejoicing, instead
of rejoicing that a man has been made whole, they sought to kill the Lord.
They sought to slay Him. They were so jealous and envious
of Him. And they tried to use the Law
against the Lawgiver. He's the Lord of the Sabbath.
And if He tells you to rise up and walk on the Sabbath day,
you've got the right to do it. He tells you to believe on the
Lord Jesus Christ, you have the right to do it. You have the
right. And last of all, verse 17, And
Jesus answered them, My Father worketh hitherto, and I work."
I'm not doing this by myself. And if you stand against me,
you're standing against God the Father. You're standing against
God Almighty. But we see there sovereign mercy. I thank God for His sovereign
mercy, because if it were not for sovereign mercy, no one would
be saved. No one. All right. Day by day his people