I want to talk about sovereign
mercy. Sovereign mercy. It says here, after this, there
was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now,
there He is at Jerusalem by the sheep market, or sheep gate. It says in the margin, gate,
a pool, which is in the Hebrew tongue, Bethesda, having five
porches. In these lay a great multitude
of impotent folk, of blind, haught, withered, waiting for the moving
of the water. For an angel went down at a certain
season into the pool and troubled the water. Whosoever then first,
after the troubling of the water, stepped in, was made whole of
whatsoever disease he had. And a certain man was there,
which had an infirmity thirty and eight years. When Jesus saw
him lie and knew that he had been now a long time in that
case, he saith unto him, Wilt thou be made whole? The impotent
man answered him, Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled,
to put me into the pool. For while I am coming, another
steppeth down before me. Jesus saith unto him, Rise, take
up thy bed, and walk. And immediately the man was made
whole. and took up his bed and walked.
And on the same day was the Sabbath. The Jews therefore said unto
him, That was cured. It is the Sabbath day. It's not
lawful for thee to carry thy bed. Can you imagine that? That's mad. Then look what he said. He answered
them, verse 11, He that made me whole, the same
said unto me, Take up thy bed, and walk. And he that was healed
wished not who it was, for Jesus had conveyed himself away of
lollitude, being in that place. Afterward our Lord findeth him
in the temple, and said unto him, Behold, thou art made whole. Sin no more, lest a worse thing
come unto thee. The man departed, and told the
Jews that it was Jesus which had made him whole. And therefore
did the Jews persecute Jesus and sought to slay Him because
He had done these things on the seventh day." Sovereign mercy,
everywhere we look, everywhere we look into God's blessed Word,
we see His sovereign grace manifested to sinners. From Adam, it was
God that sought out Adam, God that made him own up to his nakedness. God is the one who clothed him,
covered his nakedness with shed blood and animal skins. And you
know, from Adam all the way to us, we see God's sovereign grace
manifested. Paul said, When it pleased God,
He separated me from my mother's womb and called me by His grace
to reveal His Son in me. And so sovereign grace is all
that's ever saved a sinner. Noah found grace in the eyes
of the Lord. And God in grace always goes
to where sinners are, and it's always grace that saves them.
And why we say it's sovereign grace, because God is the one
who has the power and the right and the prerogative to give this
grace to whom He will. And He gives it always, always
to people that He chose in Christ before the foundation of the
world. And they didn't know He was coming. Didn't know what
he's going to do, but he did. And he doesn't. And so here we
have another picture, what I just read to you, a picture of the
sovereign grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. And he manifests this
grace to one who's in such a miserable condition and absolutely unable
to do anything about it. Now, here's the setting. Here's
the setting. It says in verse one, after this,
after this, our Lord Jesus Christ, after this, After he had healed
this nobleman's son by just saying, told him to go his way, thy son
liveth. Back up there in verse 50 of
chapter four, he says, that nobleman said, come down and heal my child.
And our Lord said, go your way, your son lives. He believed the
word and he went and when he got there, his son was healed
that same hour. And so the setting is after this,
after our Lord had saved that dying boy. After our Lord had
told His Father that He was about to do His Father's will, always
about His Father's will. And after this shows us that
our Lord is doing everything according to plan and purpose.
according to time, after this. There's always a time. After
this happened, it's time to do this. After this happens, it's
time to do this. After that was accomplished,
time to do this. So our Lord Jesus Christ is doing
everything right on time, after something's done, something else
is to be done. He's doing it according to time,
and plan and purpose that was marked out in the volume of the
book. And our Lord Jesus said it this way, I delight to do
thy will. I come to do thy will. I delight
to do thy will, O God. And then it said after this,
there was a feast of the Jews up in Jerusalem. And Jesus went
up to Jerusalem. This is probably Pentecost, and
why I say that, because over in chapter 2 it says that He
went up to Jerusalem at the feast of the Passover. So he's back
up at Jerusalem, so it's probably 50 days later. This is probably
the feast of the, probably the Pentecost. And so Jesus went
up. And then look what it said in
verse 2. Now there was at Jerusalem by the sheep gate. The margin
says gate. And what is called the sheep
gate here is because this is where they brought in all the
sheep for the sacrifices were brought in. When they bring sheep
in for the sacrifices, bringing in the lambs and that for the
sacrifices, this is the gate that they brought them in at.
This is where they brought them in at, to bring them up to the
priest and let the priest offer them for sacrifices. Always brought
in here. And the first thing, when Nehemiah
went to rebuild Jerusalem, one of the first things they did
is they rebuilt the sheep gate so that they could bring the
sheep in the right way and bring them up and offer them for sacrifices. And then not only was there the
sheep gate where the sacrifices were brought in, but there was
a pool there. And in the Hebrew tongue, it's
called the stensta. And there was a pool of water
there. I don't know how big it was. I don't have any idea, but
there's a pool. You come in that sheep gate,
and there's a great big pool of water there. And there was
five porches around it. Five porches around this sheet
gate, there's five porches around this thing, and so around this
pool here, there's five gates around, five porches around that,
and there's this pool right there. And so there's people around
on these porches, and that waiting to get in there, and they got
all these porches. And Bethesda means pool of mercy,
that's what Bethesda means, mercy. And so here's this pool of mercy. And that's why they were waiting
there at the pool of mercy, at the pool of Bethesda. And I'll
tell you something, beloved, we have a fountain of mercy.
Because of our God's Lamb's sacrifice for us, there's a fountain filled
with blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins, and sinners plunged beneath
that blood lose all their guilty stains. And when he talks about
these five porches, five in the Scriptures, always means grace,
always means favor. The Scriptures tell us that Benjamin,
Joseph gave him five times more than he gave the other brethren.
And Christ fed the multitude with five loaves. And five stands
for grace, it stands for favor. And so you have these five fortunes.
And there they are, and God's going to come and show grace
to a sinful man here. Now look what it says here in
verse 3. Oh my, this is a great multitude. There's a great multitude. And look at what the first thing
it said about them. They were impotent. Impotent. Powerless. powerless, impotent. Men made boast of their power,
and boast of their free will, and boast of their strength.
But that scripture tells us that when we were yet without strength,
Christ died for the ungodly. They were impotent people. Then
what else it says? They were blind. Blind. Not only was they impotent, they
were blind to their impotency, blind to their wretchedness,
blind to their destiny, blind to Christ in their midst. And
that's why it says there's no beauty or covenants about Him
that we should desire. And then look what else it says
about Him. Oh, a great multitude. And you think about this. Think
about all the people that you know. And this is man at his
best. This just tells us naturally what man is spiritually. They
were blind, not only were they impotent and blind, they were
hogged. That means they can't walk. Can't
walk. Hogged. They can't get up and
walk. They don't have the ability. There's lame, there's crippled.
And men are under God's holy law and God's way, and they are
blind, and they can cope, they can grope his way around, but
a crippled man can't walk at all. And so they're blind, they're
impotent, they're hogged, and men who says this about them,
they're withered, dried up, dried up, shriveled up, not able to
move. No ability. And so we got people
that are impotent. No strength, no power, no ability. And that's the way men are. They're
powerless, they're impotent to do anything to save themselves. Men can brag about them. People
can tell them how good they are. And all you've got to do is let
God. But beloved, these men couldn't
even get up in the pool. How could they let God do anything
for them? And in the middle of it, there's
hawks. They couldn't get up and walk. Get up and go! Come on
to the front! They're hawks! Can't walk, lame, crippled. And then they turn around and
tell people to walk under God's law, walk and live a good holy
life, and walk this way and walk that way. They can't walk nowhere!
Can't possibly walk in God's ways. And then there's wizards. impotent,
no ability, blind, they can't see, crippled, they're unable
to walk, wither, unable to have to do anything for work. And
then look what it says, what they was doing. They was waiting,
waiting for the moving of the water. Just waiting. And this scares me about some
folks here. They're always waiting. Always waiting. I'm getting afraid
for some folks because they're always waiting. I don't know
what they're waiting on. There's no reason for them to
wait. Christ is here. But He says, waiting for the
water to move. Waiting for some sign. And the
pool was the object in which they placed their hopes. Wouldn't
you hate to have your hopes placed in a pool of water? Do you know
over in India, and a lot of places, that you get into water, and
that water's supposed to be holy, and that water's supposed to
purify you and sanctify you. And people, they have all these
ideas of, you know, wouldn't you hate to say, boy, that pool
of water, that's where all my hope is at. Huh? And, oh, beloved, the pool, they
was waiting for the water, waiting for the water to move, waiting
for some sign. Their pool was the object in
which they placed their their hopes, and beloved, no wonder
our Lord Jesus Christ says, no man can come unto me except the
Father which sent me, draw him. Blind eyes, crippled feet, paralyzed
hands, unable to see, unable to walk, unable to work, and
yet they're sitting there waiting by a pool of water, hoping that
if they can just get in it, some way, somehow, they'll be made
whole. But now let's invert the order.
Men can't perform good works unless he's walking with God.
And he can't walk with God until God gives him eyes to see and
opens his eyes to see his need of Christ. And then he'll leave
that pool and he'll come to the water of life, the Lord Jesus
Christ. But oh, beloved, in this it says
down here in verse 4, oh, they were impotent. And it said, for
an angel went down in a certain season into the pool and troubled
the water. They were impotent. How in the world were they going
to step into the water? How's these people that's all,
how are they going to step in the water? And who stepped in
first? That was the only one that healed.
Only one person could be healed. Just one. But I tell you a great
moment, you've got there and think, boy, I'll be the one today.
Buy a lottery ticket, this will be the one today. Oh my, they stepped into David's
hall. Who first stepped in was the
only one healed. And it says a certain season. What is this? Let me tell you
something right now. This water, this pool of water
was like the law. All it showed them was their
inability to get in it and do anything about it. It was like
the law when they looked at that. I can't do anything for me. Just
showed him their inability. I can't get in. I can't get in.
I can't get in. I can't even get in there. Here's
this place to be ill and I can't get in. And then it says in verse
five. It said a certain man. A certain man. Don't make no
difference. A certain man. If the babes don't
make it, you know, he probably lost my name, but this guy did
make it. He said he had an infirmity thirty-eight years. An infirmity
thirty-eight years. Now you keep this right here.
Look with me in Deuteronomy chapter two. I want you to see something.
A certain man had an infirmity for thirty-eight years. That's
a long time. Maybe he was fifty, maybe he
was thirty-eight, maybe he was forty-two. No, I don't know how
long he'd had the infirmity, but he'd had it thirty-eight
years. Didn't say he had it all his life, just said he had it
thirty-eight years. And look what it said here in verse fourteen
of Deuteronomy, chapter two. And the space in which we came
from Kadeshbarnia until we were come over the Book of Zareth
was thirty and eight years, until all the generation of the men
of war were wasted out from among the host, as the Lord swore unto
them. It took thirty-eight years to
enter the wilderness for God to kill all them people. And
that's the way this whole war was, in the wilderness for thirty-eight
years, under that law. And that law, just like this
pool, showed them their impotency, showed them their blindness,
showed them their halt, and they couldn't help Him, Israel or
anyone else, And that law wasn't given for that purpose. It couldn't
do anything for anybody but to show us our inability. That's
all it shows us. It shows us our inability. It
showed them to us. Now look what happens here in
verse 6. Now watch this. When Jesus saw him lie and knew
that he had been now a long time in that case, Jesus saw him lie. Now, I want you to notice something
here. He didn't say he saw them. John described this great multitude.
But the Lord just saw one out of the whole bunch. He said he
saw him. He didn't say he saw them. He saw him. He just saw him. Oh, you think
there wasn't some others there? Oh, there was a lot of folks
there in some bad shape, but he saw him. And when Jesus saw
him like, and watch what, here's light shining in darkness. And
here's this light shining in darkness, and the darkness comprehended
the light. Christ, the light, just comes
here and reveals how great the darkness was and is. And Christ
is passing by among these people. They don't know who he is. He's
the unheeded, unrecognized, and unneeded. Nobody stopped him
and said, I need mercy. Nobody stopped and said, I hear
you can do miracles. Nobody said a word to him. Nobody
jumped up and said, I hear that you are Jesus of Nazareth and
that you heal a nobleman's son just by your word. No, no. He was passing by among all these
people, walking among them, unheeded, unrecognized, unneeded, And that's
the way human religion is. You impotent folk. They're still
waiting for the moving of the water, and Christ is unneeded,
unheeded, and unrecognized in the average place where you go
today. Wouldn't you say that? Huh? Now, watch what happened. And then it said, when Jesus
saw him lying, he knew that he had been now a long time in that
cage. Wonder how long the Lord knows
he's been in that cage. He said he knew that it had been
a long time. Ah, the Scriptures tells us Jesus
knows his sheep. I know my sheep. I know my sheep. I know where they are. I know
what they're doing. In fact, he knew this man before
the foundation of the world. Knew what condition he was in.
Knew the time. It was after this. That's why
Christ was there. That's why Christ wouldn't sit
on that That well, that Jacob's well, because that woman was
going to come by there. That's why he passed down that
tree, because that gas was going to be up. I mean, beloved, wherever
his sheep's at, he's going to go by, and they're going to see
him, they're going to hear. He passed by the mass, for one
reason. So by the mass, he cried out
for mercy. And oh, beloved, I'll tell you something. Christ's
got to come where we are, because we certainly ain't going where
He is. Christ gotta come to us, and he knows us, and he knows
what condition we're in, and he knows where we're at, he knows
our impotency, our blindness, our haughtness, everything about
us, but he knows all about us, and if he don't come to where
we are, we'll stay. You don't have many people, he
walked off and left everybody there, but just one man. And
our Lord saith unto him, Christ took the initiative. And let
me tell you something, beloved. Christ calls on us before we
ever call on Him. He seeks us out before we ever
seek Him. He gives us grace before we ever
start crying out for grace. He gives us mercy before we ever
start seeking mercy. He gives us a heart to make us
to love. You know, we don't even have
the ability to love Him. He has to put the love of Christ
in our hearts and cause us to love Him. That's how bad we are. But our Lord said unto him, oh
my, just stop and sit unto him, he'll hold his own sense right
now. And he took the omission. This man didn't cry out for mercy.
This man didn't know who he was. And our Lord asked him this question,
will thou be made whole? He didn't have any evidence of
any faith. This man had more faith in the
means than he had in the Lord. And then look how he answered
Christ. Without being made whole, the impotent man answered. And
he was very respectful. Sir, I have no man, no man to
put me into the pool. David says, no man cared for
my son. My mother forsake me, my father
forsake me, then the Lord will take me up. And he says, sir,
there's no man to put me into the pool. There's no man can
save me, is what he's saying. No man cares enough for my soul. No man cares enough for my condition
to pick me up at my end of the condition. I don't have a friend
that'll come here and stand with me and pick me up and carry me
and put me in that pool. I don't have a wife or a son
or a daughter or a friend or a preacher or nobody that can
pick me up and cares enough for me to carry me and put me in
that water. They're all interested in themselves.
And he said, I don't have no man. And I'll tell you, people
ask me all the time, how's the world doing? And the world has
never been good to me. God's been good to me. Grace
has been good to me. God's people have been good to
me. But the world never done me anything
but spit me up and chew me out. Ain't no man will care for your
soul. That's right. They've been chewed up and spit
out so many times. I tell you the world, they don't care. They
don't care. They don't care. You know, I'm
not just to give you an illustration of it. Very sick. We have a lot of things to deal
with and things. And then somebody calls me up and want me to help
pay for a funeral. And he told me right off the
bat, said, you know, I've got the money to pay for the whole
thing. He said, you just take care of your own situation a
day or two, call back and say, well, we decide we need that
anyway. They don't care enough about me or nobody else, you
know, they don't care about the situation you are in, your finances,
but they just care about the sin. I despise selfishness. And that's
what this fellow was. I said, everybody was so selfish,
they said, I got nobody. But now let me tell you, see,
some of you all here in the Sun Converted, you got somebody cares
for you. You got somebody that by prayer and by preaching and
by begging, by pleading and urging and beseeching, persuading you,
To come to the fountain filled with blood, to come to Christ.
Ask somebody that will tell you that just water can't do you
any good. Ask people here that will take
you and bring you in their prayers, bring you in their hearts, bring
you in their souls, bring you in their words, bring you in
the preaching, bring you to Christ. And oh, you see, he didn't understand,
see what was to understand going on. This man was looking for
help. And then he says, while I'm coming, crawling, another steps down before me. Oh, how awful is the heart of
the natural man. Boy, I tell you what, I've got
to get in there before you do. I can't help what happens to
you. I know I know what I need to do here. I don't care about
you. I just got to get in there." But look what our Master said
unto him, verse eight. Rise! Rise! Pick up that badge you're laying
on right there and walk. Listen, our Lord didn't say that
to nobody else. He never done anything for anybody
else. Christ, let me ask you something,
did He wrong others by not doing anything for them? Huh? Did He, by passing by all
the rest of them, did He wrong them? Why, no, of course not. If it
hadn't been for him by sovereign grace stopping for this one man,
then all, none of them would have been converted. None of
them would have been saved. But he went to get one of his
elect. And here's what people don't
understand is that, is that Christ, by saving somebody and
leaving everybody else to themselves, He's not hurting anybody because
nobody, one of these people, was asking Him or seeking Him.
And had He not stopped and singled this man out, not one of them
would have been saved. And had not Christ came to you
and singled you out, you wouldn't be saved either. You'd be in
religion or you'd be in the world. But you wouldn't be here hearing
the Gospel. Is that not right? That woman that called me yesterday
was talking about her daughter's son-in-law, and she'd been giving
him lots of messages to listen to, and he keeps saying, well,
what about all these other people? What about all these other people?
I said, I told her, I said, just ask him. I said, what about you?
Quit worrying about what God's going to do with somebody else.
What's He going to do with you? What's he going to do with you?
And here's what folks don't understand. Nobody, nobody, nowhere ever
seeks the Lord. The Lord's got to come to them. Abraham wasn't looking for the
Lord. The Lord found Abraham. Nobody has ever sought the Lord
until the Lord first sought them. Nobody's ever laid hold on Christ
or Christ first laid hold on them. That's what they don't
understand. And all God's got to do to let a man go to hell
is just let him alone. And all He's got to do to let
you perish and let you be a fool is just let you alone, let the
natural man alone, let your children alone, let everybody, just let
them alone, and they'll do what they will do naturally. They'll
sit around waiting for the water to move and always waiting for
something to happen. And preachers will be trying
to convince them, oh listen, I've got the pools over here
at my church. Pools over here, this is where you can get, oh
no. And our Lord said, take up your
bed and walk. All these people were equally
needy. All were powerless to help themselves.
And He could have as easily healed every single one of them, but
He didn't. He singled one man out of a great
multitude. And there was nothing different
about him than the others. He was in the same condition,
but the Lord saw him and knew him. and said unto him, as the
father raises the dead, and quickeneth him, even so the son quickeneth
whom he will." Now watch what happens here. Jesus says, rise, take up your
bed, and walk. So we see the sovereign. We see
our sovereign Savior doing something here. We see the setting. We
see the sovereign come to this man. Now look at the salvation.
And immediately The man was made whole and took up his bed and
walked. He does just exactly what Christ
told him to do. No arguing, no debating. Rise,
take up your bed and walk. Well, I'll do that. That's exactly
what he did. He just did exactly what the
Lord Jesus told him to do. And this cure was instantaneous. It was complete. Here's the difference
between what Christ does and what preachers do. Preachers
say Christ put men in a savable condition, and He opens a door
of salvation for them, but Christ actually saves people, and when
He saves them, He saves them and puts that sinner in complete,
instantaneous salvation. And He saves, and He saves with
a perfect, eternal salvation. He saved, and it was done. Oh, my. Look down there in verse
25. This is what I'm talking about.
Down there in verse 25 of chapter 5. The hour is coming. Now it is. When the dead shall
hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall
live. Oh my. Here's a man here. He heard the voice of Christ.
Rise, take up your bed, and walk. He rose, took up his bed, and
did just exactly what the Lord said to him. And immediately
that man was made whole. And look what it says. And the
same day was on the Sabbath. Now look at the scoffers. Look
at these people that hated Christ. Every time I read something like
this about these Pharisees, I think of religion and how the bondage
it puts people under. The Jews therefore said unto
him that was cured. It's the Sabbath day. It's not lawful for thee to carry
a bed. Oh, oh, oh, oh. They didn't care about him being
cured. They didn't care about his healing. They didn't care about his fact
that he had not walked for 38 years. They didn't care that they knew
this fella and seen him there all these years and years and
years. The only thing they was upset about this Saturday was,
what are you doing carrying a bed? What are you doing, why are you
bouncing that basketball? There's a church up in New Jersey
that they, they cost them people out swinging. They drove a long
way to come to service, and they'd go spend afternoons doing things,
playing basketball and swinging and swings, and had some of the
folks at the church found out about it, and told them that
they couldn't even swing swings and bounce basketballs. It's
a Sabbath day, post-arrest. I'll tell you what, I'm going
to tell you what my Sabbath is. Christ, my Sabbath. He's my Sabbath day,
my Sabbath year, my year's jubilee. He's all of them. I rest in Him. Don't you? And that's what Sabbath
means. Rest. The Sabbath becomes the
seventh day of the Sabbath because he rested. And what you do on
the Sabbath is you rest. You rest in Christ. And they
made a burden out of it. They made a law out of it. They
made a curse out of it by saying, look here, oh, it's not lawful
for you to carry your band. Now, oh my. These Jews, they
didn't care about Christ being in their midst. They didn't care
about him saving this impotent man. The first thing they do
is they go right back to Sinai. The religious cannot bear sovereign
grace. They can't bear it. They can't
bear Christ saving sinners by His grace. They got to bring
them under law. They got to bring them under some kind of bondage.
And they fight it by laws, and fight it by rules, and fight
it by traditions. But oh, listen to what He said
to them there. He said in verse 11, He answered them, didn't
argue with them, didn't dispute with them. He answered them,
He that made me whole, That's the same fella that told me to
take up my bed. If he'd ever make me old, I'd
take up my bed. I don't care what you all say
about it. He just didn't argue with him, didn't debate with
him. All he knew was that the same man who made me old said,
take up my bed. And I did. How simply he answers
his critics. He said, he that made me old,
stand fast in that liberty wherewith Christ has made you free. And
oh, and then they asked him, Then they asked. He just answered
so simply. He didn't debate with them. He
didn't argue with them. That's why I kept blinding them.
They kept after him and after him. And I said, all I know is
that I was blind and now I see. I don't care what y'all say about
anything. I was blind and I'm seeing. And the fellow that gave
me sight, I tell you what, I don't care what y'all say or do. I
know it's done. And that's all it takes. And that's what that
fellow said. And look what he goes on to say here now. They said
to him in verse 12, Then asked they him, What man is that that
said that unto you, Take up your bed, and walk? What kind of fellow,
what kind of man is he? Who is this man? Huh? Who is this fellow? Tell me where
he's at. Who is he? What does he think he is running
around here telling people, Take up your bed on the Sabbath day
and walk? Where's that man that said unto thee, Take up your
bed and walk? Where's he at? And look what he said, He that
was healed, didn't know that it was Jesus. Didn't know who
it was. For Jesus had conveyed himself
away because of multitude being in that place. And all night
he answered them, he said, I don't know who it is. I don't know
who it is. He's just a man that came and
told me and did this great thing for me. And our Lord Jesus went
out because of this multitude because he doesn't receive honor
from men. It doesn't receive honor from
men. And I'll tell you what, this shows us this. I'll tell
you that about that. He that was healed was not who
it was. Jesus had went away. This shows
us that there's much ignorance left in believers. Oh, how much
ignorance left in believers. How much ignorance there is in
babes in Christ. Christ had healed him, and yet
he hadn't seen the glories of Christ yet. He just seen what
he could do for him, what he did for him. And then look what
it says in verse 14. Afterwards, now see, Christ's
going to take care of his sheep. He ain't going to leave them
alone. They're going to hear his voice and they're going to
follow him. And then look what happens. Now, do you think the Lord saved
him and just walks off and leaves him? No, no. Afterward, Jesus
finds him. and found him in the temple.
You know what's the first thing he'd done after the Lord? He
went to worship God. He went to praise God. He went
to a place to bless God. He said, I'm going to go up here
and worship the Lord. I ain't never been in this place. This is where I'm going to go
now. And he went in the temple. And our Lord found him in the
temple. And He said, behold, you're made whole. You're made
whole. Oh, the Lord hath withdrawn from
that crowd. that this poor man might be tested.
The Jews had intimidated him and tried to over, you know,
mistreat him there, and he's now in a place of worship and
praise. And our Lord says, Behold, thou art made whole. You're made
whole. And look what He says. And He
told another woman, this woman taken in the doctor's, Sin no
more. Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon thee. Now, this
is a word. Behold, sin no more. This is
a word for his conscience. You see, grace doesn't ignore
sin. Grace doesn't ignore it. Christ doesn't ignore it. He
said, sin no more. Don't go out and live a life
of rebellion and sinfulness. Don't do that. You know, we're
sin abounded. Grace did much more abound. So
therefore, shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?
God forbid. How can we that are dead to sin
continue longer? This is a word for his conscience.
Don't sin no more. Sin is a disease, and it's natural
to all of us, even to God's elect. And all diseases of the body,
every one of them sprang from sin, because we're under the
curse. And when he says a worse thing, what does he think he
means? He says, you know, that he'll get lame again, or get
something worse, worse hypertube, some kind of worse disease. And
when you become a believer, you know one of the worst things
that can happen to you? God to hide his face, Christ to leave
you alone for a while. Now that's what he's talking
about here. He's not God. If you know this man's going
to sin again, you know that as well as I do. He said, don't
continue in sin. Don't live in sin. Don't go back
under the law. I've set you free. I've made
you whole. Now, just because you're made whole here, don't
go out here and go crazy and live a life of sin and bad. He said, don't do that. And He
said, a worse thing come upon you, and the worst thing that
could possibly happen is the hiding of God's face, a withdrawing
of His Spirit. And our Lord, by saying this,
He says, what you sow, that's what you'll reap. You sow to
the flesh, you'll reap of the flesh. You sow to the Spirit,
you'll reap of the flesh. And then look what happens in
verse 15. That man just got out of the
temple. And you know what the first thing
he did was up the temple? He went and found all them Jews
that was aggravating him and worrying about why he took up
his bed and walked in there. The man departed and told the
Jews. He said, you want to know who it was? I'm going to tell
you who it was. It was Jesus. When he found out who it was,
he went right straight back and said, I found out who it was.
He told me. He gave it to me. But, oh, listen,
the man departed told the Jews that it was Jesus which had made
him old. They asked him. He said, as quick as he learned,
he went back and told them. Oh, my. And look what happens. As soon as he understood, he
went and told them, the Lord's enemies. Now they were his enemies.
And therefore it says that the Jews persecute Jesus and sought
to slay him. And here's the reason. What a
reason. Because he had done these things
on the Sabbath day. That's a good reason to kill
a man. That's a good reason to persecute
a man. Because he did it on Saturday. That's religion at its best.
That's Phariseeism at its best. That's what law does. and slaves,
people that the grace of God has done something for. Our fathers, who were