4/29/07 More On Getting Well

Nearly a month ago we were studying the 5^th chapter of the Gospel of John.

Then we took a break for Easter,

and then extended it for a few more weeks simply because my mind was elsewhere.

But this morning we’re going to return to John’s Gospel

and to the account of an event

that took place during the second year of Jesus’ public ministry.

It is, in fact, one of only two events from that entire second year

that John selected for his account of the life of Christ.

The event we have recorded for us in this 5^th chapter

is Jesus’ healing of a man at the Pool of Bethesda in Jerusalem,

a man who had been sick for 38 years.

When we were last in this passage

we saw the way in which Jesus specifically selected this man,

and then we spent most of the rest of our time

looking closely at a fascinating question that Jesus used

to open His conversation with him.

And just to help us get our minds back into this section of John’s gospel,

let me read the opening verses from that fifth chapter.

JOH 5:1-3,5-9 After these things there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

Now there is in Jerusalem by the sheep gate a pool, which is called in Hebrew Bethesda, having five porticoes. In these lay a multitude of those who were sick, blind, lame, and withered... A man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he had already been a long time in that condition, He said to him, "Do you wish to get well?"The sick man answered Him, "Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, but while I am coming, another steps down before me." Jesus said to him, "Get up, pick up your pallet and walk." Immediately the man became well, and picked up his pallet and began to walk.

Now it was the Sabbath on that day.

And the last time we were in this study

we spent most of our time looking at that question, “Do you wish to get well?”

In the process we saw the way in which we all find our ways

of making peace with our sickness,

even to the point of viewing it as our friend.

Being sick excuses us from so many things.

It removes from us both accountability and responsibility.

It helps us find a distorted sort of peace with ourselves.

There are always reasons why we are the way we are

and why we do the things we do.

In fact it’s not at all uncommon for people

to invest huge blocks of their life

into the careful research and analysis

of the roots of their sickness,

finding out who was responsible,

who could have prevented the sickness if they’d chosen to,

and then carefully cataloguing all of the symptoms and their consequences.

And I’m not suggesting that’s bad knowledge to have.

Sometimes it can be very helpful.

But ultimately the question our Lord puts to us

is not, “Do you know how to live with your sickness?”,

it’s “Do you wish to get well?”

The truth is,

with most of the human race,

when the Lord puts that question to them

in the end they say, “No.”

And sometimes they do it not because they don’t want health,

but rather because they don’t want health from HIM.

And before we move on in this passage

I want to make just two more observations

about this “Do you wish to get well?” thing.

You see, the more I’ve thought about this incident at the pool of Bethesda

the more I’ve come to understand

why John selected it for inclusion in his account of the life of Christ.

At first reading

we see simply an account of an event

that took place at a rather nasty little back-ally hole in Jerusalem.

It was no place anyone would go by choice.

It was a collection of sick, helpless people.

But as I was rereading the passage again this past week

I suddenly realized that it was far more than just that.

It was, and is a snapshot of the entire human race.

Those around that pool were all trying to cope with physical sicknesses.

But the simple truth is

that we are all sick.

We are all wounded,

we are all infected,

we are all trying to cope with tender places,

and injuries,

and diseases of our souls.

When I have performed wedding ceremonies for couples in recent years

there is one dominant message I try to communicate

to the two people who stand before me.

I try to communicate to them

that they are marrying damaged goods.

I don’t put it in those words, of course,

because it simply doesn’t work well in a white lace and tuxedo setting,

but still I at least attempt to prepare them for the truth.

You see, the only options available for potential marriage partners in this world

are damaged goods.

We are all broken inside,

using our strength as best we can

to cope with our woundedness,

while at the same time trying to keep it hidden from those around us.

I mean, really!

What would happen if others found out?

It’s simply not an option!

From there I go on to tell them

that when they enter the marriage relationship

the central focus of their life must change

if they have any hope for the long-term success of their marriage.

They must be willing

to begin using their strengths

to protect and guard their mate where they are wounded,

and to create for them a truly safe place in which they can heal and grow.

It’s great stuff.

The wedding couple never hears it, of course.

There’s way too much other stuff going on in their lives right then.

But some of those who are watching do.

But my point is that this pool at Bethesda

is a picture of the entire human race.

And the offer Jesus made this man

is the same offer He makes to everyone us.

But the problem many people run into

is not with the offer He makes,

but rather with the fact that HE is the one who’s making it.

You see, we’re not dumb.

And even though we never put it into these words to ourselves,

still we know that someone who has the power to heal us

also has the right to rule us,

to govern our lives,

to expect, even require our submission,

and it just might be that remaining in our sickness is a much safer option.

The sickness is familiar,

it’s predictable,

and it keeps us in control.

If there was simply some sort of health dispenser

dropped into the human race,

our own personal path to the stirring of the waters that wasn’t tied to HIM,

we’d be there in an instant.

But the fact that it’s HIM who’s offering the healing

changes everything.

But there’s another side to this as well,

one we cannot understand until after we’ve come to Him.

But once we have,

once we’ve reached out to Him in trust,

once we’ve decided that what we gain with Him is worth far more than what we give up,

once we’ve begun to get to know Him,

once the fear subsides as we discover the nature of His love for us,

once that process begins to happen within our spirits

then the knowledge that the healing comes from HIM

affects us in a very different way.

Rather than turning us away,

it becomes a great, solid, hope-filled anchor for our souls.

With most of us

it is neither a quick nor a painless process

because it requires Him bringing us into an honesty

and a vulnerability before Him.

In other words,

He has to bring us to the place

where we will be honest about our need for healing,

where we will be honest about the diseases of our souls.

And He also seeks to bring us to the place

where we are at peace being desperately dependant upon Him.

It’s new stuff for all of us,

and not easy.

But in the end it creates within us

an awareness of His love that we simply could not have come to know any other way.

And then, just one added comment here before we move on,

it has been both my experience

and my observation that most of the healing our Lord does within us

is only accomplished one day at a time.

By that I mean

that rather than simply fixing what’s broken within us once and for all,

He only gives us sufficient grace for one day at a time.

I’m not saying this very well.

I think maybe I could do this better

by sharing with you some thoughts that I shared with you about three years ago.

For a number of weeks back in 2004

I shared with you what I called “My Life’s Greatest Surprises”.

One of those surprises

concerned the true nature of the healing our God brings into our lives.

The commitment of our God to bring healing into the lives of His people is certain.

In fact, with most of us

it is our pain,

our sickness,

our suffering that brings us to Him in the first place.

The Psalmist begins the 30^th Psalm with these words:

I will extol You, O Lord, for You have lifted me up, And have not let my enemies rejoice over me. O Lord my God, I cried to You for help, and You healed me.

The references throughout Scripture

to both God’s willingness

and His ability to bring healing into our lives are abundant.

From His proclamation to His people in Exodus 15:26 that, “... I, the Lord, am your healer...",

right up until Christ identifies Himself

as the great Physician who has come

to heal all those who recognize they are sick,

God’s commitment to turning our sickness into health is clear.

And we’re not just talking here about physical healing.

In fact we’re not even talking mostly about physical healing.

The greatest healing we need

is the healing of our spirits,

our minds,

our souls,

our personalities.

Now, I began my walk with the King

viewing the whole business of healing

just as I viewed every other area of life at that time,

through the eyes of the flesh,

based on the values of the flesh,

and the goals of the flesh.

And on that basis

I viewed healing as the goal

and God as the means.

Simply put, I wanted Him to fix what was broken in my life.

And before I share with you where I’ve ended up with this whole thing,

I need to offer just few comments

about the source of sickness in our lives.

All sickness,

whether it is physical, emotional, mental, or psychological

is the direct result of sin.

Some of it is the result of our own personal sins,

but most of it is the result the impact of other people’s sins

either directly or indirectly,

tracing all the way back to Adam and Eve.

During those early days in the Garden of Eden,

before sin entered into the world,

Adam and Eve lived in complete freedom from all forms of sickness.

Adam never woke up with a headache,

Eve never even had a head cold.

And more than that,

they never worried,

they never felt stressed,

they never fought with themselves, with one another, or with their God.

But do you know what it says in the very next verse

following Adam and Eve’s disobedience to God?

GEN 3:8 They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

Instantly three huge new ingredients entered into human experience -

a fear of God,

feelings of guilt,

and a deep sense of shame.

Fear...guilt...shame...

do you know what that is?

That’s sickness of the mind,

a sickness that rotted the quality of their lives,

and robbed them of the freedom they had known prior to their sin.

Rather than walking free in the warmth of the sunshine,

they cowered in the shadows,

afraid to be seen,

afraid to enter into the presence of their Creator.

It is certainly true

that their sin also resulted in the introduction

of physical sickness into the world -

viruses,

infections,

deformities,

diseases and physical defects passed on throughout the history of the human race.

And with each new generation

both the physical sickness

and the sicknesses of the mind - the fear, the guilt, and the shame,

has taken on new forms,

new expressions,

bringing about new levels of human pain and bondage.

Now, I think it is certainly understandable

why I began my walk with the King

assuming that healing meant the removal of the sickness.

What else could it mean?

Surely that should be obvious to everyone.

And there are times in our lives

when that is the way in which God expresses His grace to us.

There are times when He chooses to remove the disease from our bodies,

when He sovereignly chooses to deliver us forever from some sickness of the mind.

But in my experience that has been the exception rather than the rule

and gradually I have found a very different definition of healing taking shape within me.

Though I definitely didn’t have any conscious awareness of it at the time,

this new definition began to take shape within me

when I became increasingly aware

of a remarkable and somewhat terrifying discovery.

I discovered that my spirit’s awareness of Christ,

my hunger for Him,

my need for Him,

my evolving discovery of the depth of His love for me

seemed to be motivated far more powerfully by the presence of sickness within me

rather than by it’s removal.

Simply put,

sickness drew me to Him

and made me dependant upon Him

in ways that health never could.

And now, looking back over 40 years of life with my Lord,

I realize that in most situations

God has not chosen to remove my sicknesses,

He has chosen, rather, to teach me how to share that sickness with Him

in a way that breaks its destructive power in my life.

And after all these years,

here is the definition of healing I have come to.

True healing is not the absence of sickness,

it is the presence of Christ

and the awareness of what His presence really means.

We think healing must mean

that God removes the sickness from our flesh,

that He frees our flesh from its corruption.

But the truth is

the flesh is never freed from corruption.

My flesh was immersed in corruption the day I came to Christ,

and it will be immersed in corruption the day I leave this planet.

My hope in this life

is not that God can redeem my flesh,

my hope is that He has created within me

a new spirit,

a spirit that can then exercise leadership over my flesh

in a way that then forces it to become a temporary tool

through which the life of Christ can be expressed through me.

So, true healing is not the absence of sickness,

it is the presence of Christ

and the awareness of what His presence really means.

And what does His presence really mean?

It means that the sickness of my mind

does not define who I am.

It means that the corruption within my flesh

does not determine my true identity.

It means that my true identity is now determined

by the recreative work of God within me,

a recreative work that has made me holy,

righteous,

pure in spirit forever,

God’s holy one,

His child,

His friend.

And it means that there is no sickness within me -

physical,

mental,

psychological,

or emotional,

that has the power to control my life

or to determine my future.

My future and my effectiveness in life

is determined not by the body I dwell in,

but by the One who dwells within me,

by my Great Physician, Jesus Christ,

the One who has promised me

that not only will I find Him adequate for my sickness,

but that He will actually reshape that sickness into tremendous good in my life.

It is not the absence of sickness within our minds and bodies,

but rather the depth of our dependance upon our God

that is the greatest and most accurate indicator of true health within us.