The problem of trying to preach
after a hymn like that is you just want to stand up and say,
well, what he said. But then that's why the Lord
gave us good hymns. I pointed out that the only book
involving artistry in the Scriptures is a book of poems to sing. The only thing we find in the
New Testament that's kind of pointedly referred to in worship
is singing and making melody unto your hearts, bring your
hearts to the Lord. And every generation has its
own way of expressing their emotions through music and music forms
change over time. But a good text with an appropriate
music is very powerful. in impressing truth upon us. If you'll turn to John chapter
5. I'll be honest, I've never met
a believer that didn't like that song. John chapter 5. After this, there was a feast
of the Jews. And Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
Now there is at Jerusalem by the sheep market a pool, which
is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having five porches. Not in the sense we think of
a porch, it means colonnades. In these lay a great multitude
of impotent folk, of blind, halt, 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
whatever 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. But 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, was cured, it is the Sabbath day, it is not lawful for thee
to carry thy bed. He answered them, he that made
me whole, the same said unto me, take up thy bed and walk. Then asked they him, What man
is that which said unto thee, Take up thy bed, and walk? And
he that was healed wist not who it was, for Jesus had conveyed
himself away, a multitude being in that place. Afterward Jesus
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." Now I want
to emphasize, it will be the point of the message, it's the
part of the story that attracted my attention. Verse 7, The impotent
man answered him, sir, I have no man, and so forth. Now, I normally do my preaching
from a more modern translation, and it's simply written, I have
no one. And that's the title of this
message, I have no one. This is one of my favorite stories
from the scriptures. I love good stories. that evoke
images, and to see this scene play out before us is wonderful
on several levels. It's just a good story. What
a wonderful thing. A man had been impotent, which means powerless. Powerless. Who does that describe?
Powerless for 38 years. And he was laying here, you know,
beside this pool in the desperate hope that he could be the first
one in the water when the waters were stirred, because he believed
what was commonly said, that the first one in would be healed
of his disease. And the Lord came, and with a
power that only he had, he told the lame to walk, told him to
do something he couldn't do, and then he did it. And the man was made whole, left
the pool of Bethesda, and the next place he's found is in a
temple. And I find it remarkable that these who had so recently
come in contact with the Lord Jesus Christ knew the best answers
to give to those who hated the Lord Jesus Christ. Who told you
to pick up your mat and walk? Who has the gall? to tell you
to do work on the Sabbath. And he said, the one that told
me, the one that made me whole said, get up, pick up your mat,
and walk. And what's implied by that is
you never did anything for me. Somebody walks up to me and tells
me to walk, and I can? I'm going to figure he's in charge. And He can tell me whatever He
wants, and it will be right. It's a great story. There is
so much of the Gospel to learn from it, and yet there are some details,
and I kind of like looking into details, that you might easily
skim over and not see some things that are being said here. The
first detail I notice is this, that our Lord did live as a man. And by that, a human being. Even
our representative man. It is written that He went up
to Jerusalem to one of the feasts of the Jews. Now He had been,
I believe, in the area of Galilee. Was there not enough good work
to do there? Were there not plenty of sick people up there to heal? Certainly there was. He had plenty
of opportunity up there to preach to people, to engage in what
we might call productive ministry. Why did he stop and go to Jerusalem? Because he was a man born under
the law. And the law required that all men present themselves
at the temple or in the presence of the Lord three times a year.
And our Lord came to establish a righteousness for us. He can't
do that in disobedience to the law. So he stopped what he was
doing and went and performed what should be performed by any
person. Even though what he was doing
was observing something that pointed to him. The feast, whichever one it was,
was about Him. But when He comes here, He comes
as His people. He comes to do what they couldn't
do. to perform for them the things
they cannot perform in order that He may establish a righteousness
for them, not only that, to prove Himself an acceptable sacrifice
to them. Our Lord made a double fulfillment
of the law. He fulfilled its precepts in
the way He lived. He fulfilled its curse in the
way He died. But He couldn't fulfill His curse
if He didn't fulfill His precepts. So we see some aspect of the
Gospel, a small detail, but an important one revealed. It could have said He went to
Jerusalem and skipped the part about why. But it tells us why. And that says our Lord was fulfilling
righteousness for us. Why did He have to be baptized
by John? What did He have to repent of? Nothing. We had a
lot to repent of. And when he presented himself
to John for baptism, and John said, I need to be baptized by
you. And John was right. John didn't say anything wrong.
And I fully understand John's attitude. And the Lord said,
let it be so. Because it's necessary, it's
fitting that we fulfill all righteousness. Any man who rejected John's message
in that day was under a curse. I realize our Lord didn't need
to repent, but He did. what was required of humans in
that day. And then there's this, a detail that shows us a perfect
example of the sovereign and particular work of the Lord Jesus
in the saving of His elect. Now this is a little bit complicated,
but I think it's worth taking note of. It certainly blessed
me in studying it, and when I preached it back home, commented that
they found it helpful. In the older English translations,
I mean, excuse me, yeah, the older English translations
such as King James contains material you won't find in more modern
translations, essentially verse four. And the reason the modern
translations do not include verse four which talks about the waters
being troubled and the first one in gets healed, is in the
manuscripts and bits and pieces of the New Testament that have
been found since the days of these older translations, you
don't find this portion, which leads you to believe it was added
as a note of explanation later on. And that makes sense. In John's day, anyone would have
known why this man was at the Pool of Bethesda. Let a couple
of centuries go by, people would forget what the significance
of the Pool of Bethesda was. Remember, a generation after
our Lord was on the earth, Jerusalem was destroyed. So someone added it. But they added it in a way that
kind of obscures things about this Pool of Bethesda. It says
that an angel went down at a certain season into the pool and troubled
the water. And actually, some of these manuscripts say an angel
of the Lord did this, which would lead you to believe this actually
happened. It didn't. Well, probably didn't. It's not
one of those things you say with absolute certainty, but I'll
show you why. I certainly believe this didn't happen. There was
no troubling of the waters in the pool of Bethesda that actually
healed people. And this, well, I'll give you
the reasons right now. With that verse in place, and
particularly if we think this was an angel of the Lord and
these things actually happened, We must find a way to explain
why God would have something that looks like the superstitious
shrines of paganism, where miracles occur as magical things. Water stirs, first one in, healed. You read pagan stories, that's
the kind of things that happen in pagan stories. You don't read
anything like that anywhere else in the scriptures. Thirdly, with
that verse in place, or with you actually considering if you
thought this really happened, that the waters would be stirred
and the first one in really did get healed, we would have to
explain why every sick person in Israel wasn't there. I mean,
our Lord had been all over Israel healing people. Why weren't they? In the pool of Bethesda. Well,
it wasn't because they hadn't heard of it. It's probably because
they knew it was phony. Thirdly, and I think this is
the most important point, if you really believe that happened,
we must explain why God would have anything to do with the
system of blessing that amounted to a race to see who's first. and encouraged you to ignore
the welfare of your neighbor in favor of yourself. You can
imagine when that water was troubled, it wasn't just a race. It was
scratching and clawing, throwing people out of the way. I want
to be first. I don't care about you. None of this seems to go with
the God we worship. Well, as I was studying this,
I wanted to find out just where this pool was, so I was looking
it up on the Internet, you know. And as I looked up the Pool of
Bethesda, I learned some things about it that anybody would have
known in this day. And I say learned things about
it, probable things about it, that you're not going to get
just from reading this. And the first one is this. It
was not likely any place associated with the God of the Jews. Rather, it was likely one of
the 400 shrines to the god Asclepius that was all over the Roman Empire. And they had that mythological
tradition attached to them. And the priests of those places,
with their trickery, and that's, you know, the priesthood has
been trickery. you know, forever. Priests gained
power, and they're generally speaking more educated than the
population, and as one person said, any sufficiently advanced
civilization is going to do things that look like magic to everybody
else. And these fellows knew how to operate water, make it
move, and things like that, and I read I don't want to get too
stuck in this, but I read they even would have you going through
a tunnel to get into them and there's water running through
it. And they would, you would go in there and they're speaking
calmly to you, you would be healed and all of this. And it was psychosomatic
healing. That's all that ever happened.
Now, the interesting thing is, and you know, we wouldn't want
to just go from, what somebody supposed about it. But there's
a detail in this story that lends credence to that view of the
Pool of Bethesda, that it was a pagan shrine to Asclepius. Asclepius was supposedly the
son of Apollo and a mortal. And he had two daughters, one
named Hygieia, the other named Panacea. He was the god of medicine. And of course, you can see the
daughter Panacea. We know what a Panacea is. We
just brought it right into our language. It's a cure-all. Hygieia. We get our word hygiene from
that. She was the goddess or semi-goddess of well-being, of
soundness. They said, what difference does
that make? The Bible uses several words talking about being cured.
One of them is the word Hygieia. It's found 11 or 12 times in
the New Testament in reference to good health. Five of those
times occur in this story. The rest of them are spread all
over the New Testament. Now, the word is also used to describe
sound doctrine. But when it's related to health,
nearly half the times you find this word, it's right here in
this 15-verse story. Now, this story has one more
reference to healing, and it uses a different word. It uses
the word therapeuo, from which we get our word therapy. And
it's used when the Jews confronted him. And he's described as one
that was cured, and they use that word. Instead of every other
case of being healed, uses this word hygiene. So here you have
what makes perfect sense to me, this pagan shrine dedicated to
the medicine god Asclepius. And by the way, that's his symbol
that doctors wear, the snakes wrapped around a pole. And so
when the Holy Spirit inspires John to record what went on there,
He makes him use this word connected with Asclepius. Now, this is the only gospel to relate
this story. It uses this word to describe
this fellow being healed. And there's another reason to believe
that the pool of Bethesda was a pagan shrine. Look in verse
14. Afterward, Jesus findeth him in the temple, and said unto
him, Behold, thou art made whole, sin no more, lest a worse thing
come upon thee." Now let's face it, our Lord knew this man would
sin again. So he couldn't have been saying,
don't ever commit another sin, or something worse is going to
happen to you. Because that surely means, he may as well have just
skipped right to, surely something worse is going to happen to you.
You know, when our Lord, in speaking to the woman taking an adultery,
He says, go and sin no more. And you read in Hebrews about
besetting sin. You read in John, you know, he
or that which is born of God does not sin. I sin all the time. What's this mean? It's not referring
to sin in general. We might generalize it this way,
what our Lord was telling this man, do not go back from what
I just rescued you from. Do not go back to that pagan
shrine. I found you in idolatry. I pulled
you out. Don't go back. What was it in
Hebrews? You were saved from that former
way of life handed down to you. Don't go back to do so. That's an evil heart of unbelief.
And so what he's telling this man, the only way it makes sense
is, don't go back to that pagan shrine. Don't trust in a false
god again. And that's what the scriptures
tell us everywhere. God has saved us from that. Supposedly. I mean, that's what we claim. But if a man goes back to that,
now, we may want to get all theological about it and say, well, that
means his former faith wasn't real faith. I understand that. But
just looking at it from the outside, when someone goes back to that
which God saved them from, in truth, they never were saved
from it. And as Peter said, it would have been better if they
never heard the word of truth at all. Their end is worse than
it was at the beginning. Now, that makes perfect sense
if this is a pagan shrine. Taking that view of the Pool
of Bethesda, let's look at this story and pick up a few things
we might not have seen otherwise. Our Lord left the temple. Now,
I say He left it. I cannot establish that He ever,
you know, once He got to Jerusalem, He went to the temple. But that's
what He always did. And that's what He was there
for. I mean, He was there for a feast that involved the temple.
He left the temple. Now what did the temple symbolize?
Well, it symbolizes, among other things, the presence and throne
of God. The psalm says, Thou art enthroned
between the cherubim. That Ark of the Covenant was
an illustration, or was for them, the throne of God. And so that
temple represented God's presence among them, And then it represented
his authority, his enthronement among them. Now, we assume Christ was there
at some point. Then what did he do? By the way,
I told you I learned some of this. I was just trying to find
out where the Pool of Bethesda is. Well, I believe that it's very
close to the north wall of the temple. And of course everything
is downhill from the temple. And I've seen excavations of
this pool. And you wouldn't go there by
accident. It was downhill and you would
have had to turn aside to go there. So our Lord, in His natural life, He does
this symbolic trip from the temple. God's throne, where God lives. In fact, all those old, including
the pagan temples, what we call the Holy of Holies was a symbol
of heaven. God's throne. And our Lord, that's
where He was. What does Philippians say? Though
by nature He was God, He did not consider it King James uses
the word robbery, but it means to be clung to. He let it go
and made himself of no reputation. Our Lord went down from the temple
right into a place of idolatry. From the glories of heaven into
this world full of idols and idolaters. And that's what our Lord did.
And he had to go there on purpose. Like I said, you don't go there
by accident. But why would you go down there and then have to
climb your way out? Because it's not on the way to
anywhere. And that's what our Lord did. He came down here. Note this. He went to the pool
for one person. One person. Our Lord did not
enter the pool of Bethesda and say, anyone who wants to be healed,
line up right here. No doubt, many of them responded
to that. Because there were many who could
have gotten to Him. After all, not everybody there
was lame. But if that's what our Lord would
have done, He would have excluded the one man He came for. Because
if a man can't get in the pool on his own, he can't get to the
Lord on his own either, can he? So our Lord didn't do it. Y'all
come. He walked into that pool of Bethesda. He saw that man.
And our Lord knew what some people believed about that pool. And
He asked the man, and it's right here, verse 6, "...Wilt thou
be made whole?" Now, remember, it's using this rare in the Scriptures
word for being cured, Hygeia. So it's as though our Lord was
saying to this man, do you want what Hygeia can give you? Is
that what you're waiting for? Is your trust in this supposed
goddess, who when the waters are troubled,
if you can jump in, she'll give you what you're looking for.
You'll be made whole. Is that what you want? And then
the man responds according to the flesh.
And that's what all of us do when we first hear anything from
our Lord. We respond according to the flesh. Why? Because that's
all we are. I mean, the flesh cannot give spiritual responses.
And He responded according to what He did believe And he says,
well, when the waters are troubled, I don't have anyone to pick me
up and put me in. And before I can drag myself
there by my hands, somebody who's got strong legs but maybe a bad
elbow, he gets in before me. When gospel is presented, men
always respond according to the flesh. and they always have trouble
with it because they think that their salvation must involve
something they're able to do, but they really know they can't
do it. Now they may not admit it out loud, but that's why everybody
fears death. As I pointed out, the man wants
to die and after that the judgment. And really we don't fear death,
we fear the judgment that we know is coming after and the
reason we fear it is we know it's not going to go well with
us. And so they're trying to do well,
but deep in their conscience, which God has given to all flesh,
the law written on earth, they know they are not going to pass
the test. And this man is saying, I can't do what's required of
me to get the blessing that I want. When this man made that statement,
and I'm sure he didn't realize this, But He showed the utter
uselessness of all false gods and all false religions. Because
all false gods and all false religions based upon them require
sinners to do something to get blessing from God. And sinners
can't do anything. So what has our Lord done here?
By His question. You want what Hygieia has got
for you? He has made that man admit Hygieia is powerless. because he is powerless. Now,
note our Lord's sovereign working here. He does not then ask the
man, would you like me to heal you? The Lord has already heard all
he needs to hear from this man. This man so much has confessed,
for Hygeia to heal me, I must do something better than others
do it. But I can do nothing, and I have no one to help me.
The blessings of God are not for those who have power to obtain
them. They are for the powerless. While
we were powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. And all our
Lord needed to ascertain was this man's understanding He's
powerless. And he brings all his people
to that acknowledgment. John says if we confess our sins,
he's not saying if we can come up with a catalog of the sins
we've committed that day. No, to confess means to say the
same thing. If we say the same thing about
our sins that God does, then what is that? They are continual.
They are overpowering. I can't stop it. I'm powerless
against it. That's what this man just said.
Even though he didn't actually realize it. You know, sometimes sinners know
more than we give them credit for. And they know more than
they realize they know. But the Lord, He looks on the
heart. And the Lord, we would say by
grace, had worked this understanding in this man. Now, none of us ever know how
bad our sin is. We don't have to know that. There's
only one person in history who knows how wicked sin is. And that's the Lord Jesus Christ.
Not even those in hell know it. Why? Because they have never
experienced the fullness of hell yet. If they ever did, they'd
be out. Our Lord is the only one who ever did. He knows how
great your sin is. Here's what we need to know.
It's greater than us. Our sins are more than we can
handle. So, our Lord did what no one
but a sovereign and omnipotent being could do with any good
outcome. He looked at this man and said,
get up. Pick up your mat and walk. He
told the man to do what he had not been able to do for 38 years. He didn't reach over and touch
him and make him feel something, then tell him to get up. He told
him in the midst of his crippledness, get up. He didn't tell them roll away
the stone. Go in there and give some CPR
to Lazarus or shock him or something. And if he stirs a little bit,
I'll tell him to come out. He spoke into death and said,
live. And he that was dead, lived. He spoke to a cripple and said,
walk. And he that was crippled, walked. The gospel calls us to do what
we cannot do. People think the gospel is easier
than the law. No, the law is easier than the
gospel. Because the law, at least outwardly, a spiritually dead
man can perform it. Paul said it. Concerning the
righteousness of the law, I'm blameless. But you can't believe. You can't
do what the Bible says. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ
and thou shalt be saved. And they go, it's that easy.
Well, if it's that easy, why isn't everybody doing it? It's not easy, it's impossible.
It's simpler than the law, but much more difficult. The law
was 600 and some things. The gospels one, but the one
thing you can't do it, but it doesn't matter. Because when
he says do it, such is the nature of our Lord that the power to
do it goes with it. He says to the spiritually dead,
live, and they live. He says to the unbelieving, believe,
and they believe. And then it says, upon our Lord
speaking, the man was made, Hygieia. Now what is our Lord doing? Well,
first of all, it's not written that the Lord said these things,
that the man exercised his free will and believed what the Lord
said so he was made well. It just says the Lord said it
and it was done. The man was made well before
he did anything that even remotely looked like a believing act.
But I like the way that our Lord used that word, Hygieia. Now,
you say, well, the Lord didn't speak Greek. He spoke Aramaic
or Hebrew. I don't care what language the Lord was speaking
that day. When the Holy Spirit inspired
John to record this, He used the word Hygeia, and that's what
we're to go with. And here's what I've seen. He walked into
this pagan shrine. He says, Hygeia is claiming the
power to heal. It's mine. I say it. Now you're
sound. Now you're well. All that Hygeia
claimed to offer you, I'm giving it to you. And I'm not requiring
anything from you to get it. I didn't set it out there and
say, go get it. I brought it to you. What Hygieia
can never do for you, I just did. He went to the shrine of a pagan
god and took away the glory of that god, which never belonged
to that goddess anyway, and said, it's mine. Christ in essence
says to this man, Asclepius and his daughters, Hygeia and Panacea,
they left you helpless and lame. False gods cannot give us what
we need, can't give you what you need. They depend on you
doing the very thing you cannot do, walk. But I take from them
the glory that men have wrongly ascribed to them. I claim it
for yourself. I am your Hygeia. I am your health. I am your well-being. Christ
said to us, I am your life. I am your righteousness. I this,
I that. It's all me. Understand that
our Lord came here not simply to save us. He came here to reclaim
the glory that had falsely been given to false gods and ascribed
to what the apostle would describe as demonic powers. They robbed
the Lord of it. Now, they can't rob Him of the
essential glory, but they rob Him of the proper acknowledgement
that this is all from Him. He causes His rain to fall on
the just and the unjust, and the unjust say, that's Baal,
the storm God gave us rain. And as I pointed out, Elijah
showed up and said, no, it's not Baal, it's God. It rains
when God wants it to and it stops raining when God wants it to. Now, I don't know about you,
but I look at it with this understanding of it being a pagan place. What
our Lord did, He's gone to war. His world has been invaded and
He is driving the invaders out and rescuing His people from
it. Now, when that man took up his
bed and walked, where did he walk? Out of the pool of Bethesda. And where is the next place you
find him? In the temple. In the temple. Later, Jesus finds him there. The temple is the shrine of the
true God. It's there in the sight of all these sacrifices, priests,
alters even the Ark of the Covenant, all the symbols of Christ in
His Gospel. Once He was healed, He did not say, well, I'm sure
glad that this man took care of the big problem, but you know
something? I still got a little psoriasis
here. So now that I can walk, I'm going to sit here because
the next time those waters are troubled, I can get there first. He left the pool of Bethesda.
And our Lord says to him, in essence when He says, go and
sin no more, how we apply this to us is to realize, just as
this man realized the pool had nothing that he needed before
Christ came, we now realize that once Christ came, the pool had
nothing that he wanted. Now, He has given us spiritual
life. He has given us strength to rise
and come to Him. He enabled us to believe in all
of this. That doesn't mean we don't still
have some troubles. And here's what our flesh says.
Yeah, you're still sinning. You need to go back to the pool
of Bethesda and take care of these lesser things. Now, what
is our pool of Bethesda normally? Well, being raised in Judeo-Christian
culture, the law. Well, the law couldn't make me
alive. But now that I'm alive, the law's
going to be able to help me stop this Senate. Really? Couldn't do anything for you
before. Why do you think it can do something for you now? What
the law was unable to do, God did by sending His Son. Now,
do you think all at once now the law is able to pick up where
Christ left off? He's saying to this man, I am
all your well-being. You don't need ever to go back
to that place, and don't. And have you ever seen someone
believe, claim to believe anyway, look like they're rejoicing in
the gospel so happy, and then they suffer a terrible fall.
And they can't handle their guilt. And so what do they do? Oh, I've
done something awful. Alright, I'm going to start reading
the law every day, and I'm going to make sure I do this. I know a fellow that this happened
to. Terrible fall. He'd been listening to the Gospel
for nearly 20 years. Looking like he rejoiced in it.
Looking like he believed in it. Got caught in an awful sin. Scandal. And what did he do? All at once he gets rid of it.
And he faulted the preacher for not preaching the law. Told him,
if you'd have been preaching the law, I wouldn't have done
that. Caused big trouble in the church and finally left. And
you know what? He went right back to doing what
he'd been doing before he heard the gospel. And worse yet, when Christ heals us, understand
He is all we need ever for anything. And to go to something else is to spit in the face of His
glorious sufficiency. Well, I said that what drew me to this
passage was this man's statement, I have no one. I have no one. And the man was right in what
he said. He had no one. I don't know how he got to the
pool of Bethesda. Maybe loved ones took him there,
but whoever brought him there left him there. And it doesn't
matter how close he was to the pool, he couldn't be the first
one in. Getting you close doesn't help
if you're without power, impotent. They left him there. I don't
know how long he'd been there. I know 38 years he'd been lame,
but I don't know how long he'd been there at the pool at Bethesda. His only hope for healing rested
on Him doing something He simply could not do, or think of this,
it lay in the mercy of other sick people around Him, willing
to put Him in at their own expense. Not much hope of that happening. Many who could have been there
were not there because they didn't know the man or his need. Many
who could have been there were not there for they had no confidence
in the power of the pool. They didn't believe that pagan
nonsense anyway. Why sit and wait with him if
I don't believe that it's going to do him any good to put him
in? Many who could have been there to help did not do so because
they didn't care. The Pharisees did not care. You'll
not find a Pharisee entering that pagan temple. You'll not
find them even going in there and saying, Brother, you're not
going to get any help here. There's nothing for you in this
pool. Come on out. Let us go to the house of the
Lord. Let us go there and behold the types and pictures of our
substitute whom the Lord said would come and put away our sin. I'll carry you. But let's get
out of here. No. They disapprove. They're
all together lost in sin. And there were those who could
have helped him, but did not, because they were too busy helping
themselves. Some well-off person could have
gone to him and said, I will not wait for the stirring of
the waters to put you in, for I think it's useless. But I can
take you to my home, and I can give you a good place, a good
bed to sleep in, and good food to eat. I can at least take care
of your earthly needs, even if I can't heal your lameness. But
I can make it so that it's not such a burden to you. No one
did that. And let me ask you this question
now, and this is an exhortation. What are you doing for the lame
in our world, lying by the pool of Bethesda? It's so easy for
us to wrap ourselves up in our proper doctrine and be satisfied
that we've been saved. I know the Lord will go Himself
to the pool of Bethesda, and He will heal all of His people.
He will get them all out of there. I know that just as Mordecai
said to Esther, maybe you've come to this for such a day as
this, but if you don't do it, salvation for the Jews will rise
from somewhere else. Your failure to zealously Seek
the salvation of others is not going to result in the loss of
one of God's elect. But brethren, don't you want
to be involved? I know I'm not going to add anything,
but if you'll just let me tag along. Let us never be content that
we have been saved. Let us never say, I know the
truth, and not our hearts be broken for those who don't. Let
us not engage in the theological battles of the day with others
who like to fight about it while there's people dying without
the truth because they've never even heard it. Let us remove ourselves from
the useless combating that so easily, and I've done it a lot,
so easy to get drawn into. Let us go where the fight's really
happening. to those lost in sin, dead in
transgressions and sins, putting their hope in a false God. And
let's not be angry at them. That's where we were. That's
where the Lord found us. Let's go and tell them about
a wonderful Savior. The man said, I have no one.
He was right. But he was also very wrong. He
did have someone. It just wasn't the someone he
thought he needed. He didn't have anyone to put him in the
pool. And that was good. Because there was nothing in
the pool for him either. But he did have one who didn't
need the pool. He did have one that could do
for him what even the pool couldn't do for him. He had one who came
all the way down from heaven to find Him. And say, get up. Get up. You and I had no one. There was a time when nobody
cared in this world. And then there was a time when
even those who cared, their impotence was shown. They told us the truth,
but it didn't make any difference. But for every believer here,
There was a time when he that came down from heaven descended
into our pagan idolatry. He said, do you want what this
has got to offer? Is this what you really want?
Is this what you're going to trust? Oh, I don't have anyone to put
me in. Now get up. Let's get out of
here. And you who could not walk, got
up. And you left. And the religious
world said, what are you doing? It's the Sabbath day. Who said
you could take up your mat? The guy that healed me? Well, that's not right. Boy,
how hard hearted you can get. Here's this guy who's been lame
for 38 years. And they're more interested that
he's got his little rolled up mat in his arm on the Sabbath
day Why weren't they saved? Who did this? This has got to
be somebody to pay attention to. Well, we get it too. But it's
okay. Because He said, the one who
healed me told me to do this. And so we go through our lives,
still having our problems, but still laying them all on Him.
Knowing that the work He began, He'll eventually finish it. And
it will be perfect. And no longer will we be the
cripple who can walk, but you know, he's still got some other
problems. We will be like the one who came and said to us,
get up, take up your bed, and walk. And brethren, with that truth,
let us never go back. There wasn't anything there when
we were there, and it still got everything it had before. Nothing. Well, I'm done, so I'll quit.
May God bless His message.