The following is a sermon from Grace City Church in Denver, Colorado. Grace City exists to make and mature disciples of Jesus Christ. For more info, visit gracecitydenver.com. Today's scripture reading is from John 5, 1-18. After this, there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there is in Jerusalem, by the Sheep Gate, a pool, an Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five-roofed colonnades. In these lay a multitude of invalids, blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man was there who had been an invalid for 38 years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, do you want to be healed? The sick man answered him, sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up. And while I'm going, another steps down before me. Jesus said to him, get up, take up your bed and walk. And at once the man was healed and he took up his bed and walked. Now that day was the Sabbath. So the Jews said to the man who had been healed, it is a Sabbath and it is not lawful for you to take up your bed. But he answered them, the man who healed me, that man said to him, take up your bed and walk. They asked him, who is the man who said to you, take up your bed and walk? Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was for Jesus had withdrawn as there was a crowd in the place. Afterwards, Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, see, you are well. Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you. The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him. And this was why the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. But Jesus answered them, my father is working until now, and I am working. This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own father, making himself equal with God. This is the word of the Lord. I want to begin this morning with a reminder that when we read the word of God, we are not just reading words on a page as we would read another book. but we're actually inviting scripture to read us. What I mean is some of the apostles will say things like this, the scripture is like a mirror that is held up to you to show you what your heart is like, what your mind is like, what your priorities are like. And even as you're doing some reading in God's word, it's showing you things in your life that don't look like Jesus, things that God wants to renew, that he wants to transform to look more like Jesus. And I say that because when we come to a story like this this morning, it's a unique story and it's about a man who got a particular healing. but I don't wanna just read it as a story about him. I think scripture continually invites us to connect with the people that we read about. I don't mean like making yourself the hero of every story and being like, I'm David and I need to go slay my Goliaths as well, but identifying with people in their brokenness, in their doubts, maybe in their questions that they're bringing to God, in their I'm not there yet kind of life. and let God do a work in you, even as he's done in this particular man. So this morning, I'm gonna break this story down with these four points. And again, instead of just looking at him, this invalid who was healed by Jesus, I'm gonna refer to us and our lives. So let's talk about our situation, our savior, our Sabbath breaker, and our substitute. So the scene takes us to the old city of Jerusalem. As we start this story, John is telling us that right outside the temple gate, known as the Sheep Gate, there is a pool called Bethesda. By the way, for generations, skeptics challenged the historicity of the Gospels with things like this. They said, there is no such pool outside the Sheep Gate. And they would go a step further and say, the fact that John mentions five colonnades, there was no five-sided pool in antiquity. That's not how they built pools. So in the year 1888, a German archeologist by the name of Konrad Schick was excavating near the existing church of St. Anne, and he discovered these pools right where John said they were. That little road leading away from the pools of Bethesda to a now sealed up gate, that's the Sheep Gate. And that's where these pools are. By the way, you'll notice it's kind of a figure eight, or there's actually two pools. And so you have the four outsides, then you have a colonnade going across the middle. And so there are five colonnades, just as John said. And I love that, by the way. I'll just insert this. This is not the point of the sermon, but as you encounter science and history and archeology and psychology and all these different studies, I think sometimes Christians fear that something is going to be discovered or something already has been discovered that undermines your faith. And I think there's no such thing. I think God's word is so reliably true. I would encourage you, whatever fields of study you enjoy, study them. Because as more and more truth comes to light, as the 1888 discovery of these pools under the Church of St. Anne, or right next to the Church of St. Anne, we find they literally had just not gone deep enough in their previous archaeology. And once they did, this is what they found. Well, let's come back to this situation then. So these are the pools. A spring flowed into the upper pool, and then in time that upper pool would overflow to the lower pool somehow. And John is mentioning verses three and five. In these colonnades lay a multitude of invalids, blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man was there who had been an invalid for 38 years. And I wanna begin by saying this is a picture of complete weakness and helplessness. The word invalid in the Greek literally means without strength. Today, we would still use the word invalid, especially in the healthcare industry, to refer to a person who is either too sick or too weak to take care of their own basic needs. An invalid is someone who needs around-the-clock care for someone to literally just take care of the basic needs. You'll notice John identifies some of the people that are here as blind, that's there, without strengthness. Some of them are crippled, which is a reference more to like an injury or something they're born with, and some of them paralyzed. It's interesting, he doesn't say anything more specific about the condition of this specific man. He simply uses the general description, invalid. Again, weak, without strength. Looking through some commentaries, I wanna read something that I came across, because I think we need to see this man first for who he was and what condition he lived with in that time. So this writer says, problems of mobility and livelihood and social isolation just begin the list. Taking these issues together, we can build a portrait of this man's life. People moved him from place to place unless he crawled. Most of his income came from begging or from the charity of friends and family. And if he did not have bladder or bowel control, his hygiene problem would have been enormous. People stayed away from him. And I don't say that to be weird, but the reality is many who are paralyzed, many who are crippled, do not have control over their bodily functions. And the picture I want to give you is that not only is he a man who is physically either injured or born with something, lived with it for 38 years, but he's a social pariah. He's living on the margins of society. And so it's a man that has many, many layers of weakness and helplessness and frustration in his life. He's a spiritual outsider. Because by the way, the Old Testament said that someone in his condition can't come up to the temple and worship God. He's a broken physically person that's meant to represent there needs to be a wholeness to come before God. He needs someone to make him whole so he can even get to God. But worse than the, I think worse or as bad as the weakness and the helplessness is that this is also a picture of hopelessness. And not only is he hopeless, but without Christ we're hopeless. And I want you to just imagine living 38 years in this man's condition. And you have to think he's tried everything. You have to think that those who initially cared for him, if he had parents who were still alive or siblings or something like that, had spent some amount of money taking him to doctors and trying to get some kind of care for him that could possibly allow him to walk again. Sometimes just cut through the pain that he experienced of dragging himself around. But no doctor had been able to help him. And this man probably by this point in his life is resolved to something like this. I'm literally going to live and die on this mat. I hear utter hopelessness in this man's words. You notice even when Jesus goes to him, finds him, gives him his attention and asks him, do you want to be healed? You notice what he doesn't say. He doesn't say yes. And you would think in a sense, of course I want to be healed, but what kind of question is that, Jesus? Are you mocking me? Are you really that insensitive that you're just walking up to a stranger and saying, oh, do you not wanna be healed? And something I may say a few times is I think really internally his answer is yes, but. Yes, of course I wanna be healed, but I can't. No one can be healed from this condition. I've been to the doctors. I've been to the religious professionals. People have prayed over me. People have asked God for a miracle. And I think that internalization sounds in our lives a lot of times like yes, but. As we read a scripture, a verse, a lengthy text, a story, we may think it's great that God did that for that person. Well, would you like me to do that for you? Yes, but. I've had friends carry conditions for a long time, chronic pain, or chronic marginalization, or even death. And it can be easy to adopt this cynical posture of yes, but. So I think that's why this man responds, because he's telling Jesus why it's not gonna happen. He's like, it's impossible, it's absurd. Why are you asking me if I want to be healed? So his answer is not yes, it is, sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going, another steps down before me. That's verse seven. Now there's something in there that I need to explain more in a bit. But first I want you to notice just the heart of his response as he's saying, there's no one who can help me. There is no person, he's literally saying, there's no man who can help me. Whatever the root cause of his condition, his parents couldn't help him, his siblings couldn't help him, his town couldn't help him, his doctor couldn't help him, he can't help himself. He's just like, I have no one. And that's what hopelessness sounds like. I've tried all these things, there is no one who can help me with all due respect, sir. And let me put a few more nails in that coffin before we come to the upside of this story. If you're still looking at this image, I want you to notice the proximity of the pool of Bethesda to the temple. So what that means is he's lying there for 38 years, or he's coming and going from there for 38 years, and the priests are coming. and the scribes are coming and the rabbis are coming and the religious faith healers are coming and going from the temple. All these people are coming and going for all the festivals and daily sacrifices. And I think this is a not so subtle indictment of the powerlessness of institutional religion apart from the power of God. It can be literally right there with everyone passing by and there's nothing they can do for him, nothing. They probably don't even see him. There's another interesting detail I dug up here. There's substantial evidence now that this particular pool, the pool of Bethesda, is a mikveh. So let me explain. A mikveh can be, there's kind of a verb form and there's kind of a noun form. It is either a place of ceremonial washing or it is the ceremonial washing itself. But the idea is, if you know the Jewish culture, there are all these special feasts, and then there's the weekly Sabbath. And to go and worship God, they would often have more of a ritual cleansing than what we would think of as a proper bathing with soap and all the hygiene, but at least a ritual washing where they're picturing, like, to come before God, I need my hands washed, or I need my body washed, or I need my feet cleansed. to be pure ceremonially to come then and to present my gifts to God and to worship Him and to enjoy Him. I need to do that. As I said, there's substantial evidence now that this was one of those ceremonial washing places. And given its proximity to the temple, I imagine at the feasts, thousands of people who are about to go up and worship God are coming through there, are going down in the water because they're able-bodied people and they're getting their ceremonial cleansing and they're going up and they're worshiping God. And imagine that layer of hopelessness of seeing all these people traipse through your area. And you're like, I can't do what they're doing. I can't get up. I can't get myself to the water. I can't then go up to the temple. There's nothing I can do. And again, part of this hopelessness is he's looking at what can the law do for me? What can the ceremony do for me? What can religion do for me? I've laid here all these years, all these people come and go and nothing changes. As I leave this picture up here, I want you to also notice the proximity to the Antonia Fortress. That's those four corner buttresses that stick up higher. That was where a Roman garrison was headquartered throughout the year. That's where Pilate, the governor, that's where Herod Antipas spent significant time when they were in Jerusalem. Again, it's a not so subtle dig. That's where your government is. That's where the money is. My government can't do anything for me. And you may feel like that sometimes, like my religion is not doing anything for me. The laws aren't doing anything for me. But even my government with all these resources, they're not fixing my problem. That makes me feel more hopeless. And then finally, let's return to this bit about the stirring of the waters and the notion that he could get healed that way, verse 7. And if you look closely, you may notice that verse four is missing from your Bible. How many of you, as you look at your verse designations, it jumps from three to five? How many of you have a verse four in the text? I'm just curious. Okay. What happened to verse four? It's a missing Bible. See, there's conspiracy theories. This is exciting stuff, right? So this is textual criticism now that we get to do for a moment. Why is verse four missing for most of your texts? First of all, let me add verse four back in if it were there and tell you what it would say. It would say something like this. In these, and it's in these colonnades, That's cool. So what happens with verse four? So you just imagine you've got these Greek manuscripts and you are looking at a handwritten Greek manuscript and you're a scribe or a copyist. And so you're sitting there and you're copying what someone else has handwritten before you. And this is how the scripture was kind of promulgated throughout the empire back then is there's no printing press. Somebody just has to literally sit there and look at every diacritical mark, every letter and copy it out. So Some of you have this sacred thing where you're like, I can't write in my Bible because it's God's word and you just don't write in your Bible. And some of you are like, I write notes in my Bible and I'm one of those and I'm not telling you which to do. But what would happen in this time is if the text is handwritten and then someone who's studying it as a rabbi or a teacher of the law is also making their own handwritten notes in the same language, in the margin or between lines, a copyist would come back later and sometimes be like, huh, I don't know if that was in the text or if that's the copyist notes, and for the fear of dropping something from scripture that was in scripture, they would write it out, often with a little note that we're not sure if this is original. What's interesting is verse four that I read about the angel of the Lord coming down, stirring the water, whoever gets in first gets healed, that doesn't show up in the earliest manuscripts. In fact, it doesn't show up for several centuries after the life of Jesus, and then suddenly this starts to appear in the text. And so our best guess of what happened here is we had verse seven, where the man says, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up and while I'm going another steps down before me. Somebody wrote in verse four as an attempt to explain, what's he talking about in verse seven? It may be historical, it might be accurate that there's an angel of the Lord doing this. It may also be what I mentioned earlier that this is literally a natural spring flows into this. And we know from other history and culture that at times of the year as the spring kind of bubbled up, the water stirred naturally. Regardless of what's going on here, here's the critical thing I want you to see. Somehow this pool of Bethesda came to be associated with a superstition. And the superstition was the water itself has healing power for one person every time it's stirred. Now again, is it possible that something like that did happen historically? It's possible. That's not documented in history. We have no record of that other than this scribal note that's been added. And so most of you, as you're reading your Bible and you say verse four is not there, or you may look, if you have a study Bible, it may be a footnote. And so those words have been preserved, but likely we're not there, okay? Don't show up for hundreds of years. But John's point is simple. He's saying this man's superstition about I need to be the first in the water when the water stirs is doing nothing for him. Just like man-made religion and ceremony and the law is doing nothing for him. Just like the doctors are powerless for him. And that's his first point, our condition. You can layer the things in your own mind physical things, emotional things, relational things, financial things, spiritual things, on and on, where you see a brokenness or a lack of wholeness in your life. And maybe it's even boiled over to the point of you feel utterly hopeless because you think, you know, with my health or with my finances or with a particular relationship, I feel like I've tried everything. And nothing is fixing this. Nothing is healing this. Nothing is breaking this addiction. And some of you know that. And I'm not just talking about addiction to a drug. I'm talking about addiction to too much of good things that we're not able to let go of because they're controlling things in our life. And you may say, I don't understand why this has so much power over me, but I've tried everything to break it. I've tried everything to stop this bad habit. I've tried everything I can think of to start this new good habit, like daily Bible reading, and I get a little ways, and then I just, I quit every time. I feel hopeless. Or maybe as I said, you're doing this yes, but thing, where you have your own internal dialogue. Or maybe even you in a sense read a text and it's Jesus is like, would you like me to do this? And you're like, yes, bud. And I wanna say to everyone who's without healing of some kind or without hope of some kind, point two is our Savior. So Jesus is back and forth to Jerusalem from Galilee up north for these various feasts. John doesn't tell us what particular feast this is, but there he is. And perhaps for his own ceremonial mikvah, Jesus goes into the colonnades of this pool. Verse six, when Jesus saw him, that invalid, lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, do you want to be healed? And the first thing I want you to see about our savior is his compassion. First words, Jesus saw him. And I don't want to skip over those words. Jesus saw him. Okay, what's this story about? Jesus saw him. Jesus saw him in a culture when nobody else saw him. Nobody saw him. He's over here off to the sides. And if you see a person in that condition with the legs and the hips all atrophied, and again, if he's struggling with incontinence of some kind, he's even worse to look at. And people would instinctively avert their, like, I'm just here for my cleansing. I'm here to do my thing. I don't wanna see people like that in my day-to-day life. That's how he was treated. And so these are remarkable words just that John would note. Jesus saw him. Jesus noticed him. Maybe he recognized him from a previous visit to the same pool, we don't know, but he knew he'd been there for a long time. And next, again, this question, do you want to be healed? And if you're like, that's a dumb question, that's so insensitive. Of course he wants to be healed. Do you know a lot of people don't actually wanna be healed? It's not a dumb question. A lot of people don't, it's not that they don't wanna be healed, maybe I should put it this way. Do you know a lot of people want what they want more than they want a healing? They want the pity more than they actually wanna be healed. They want to be able to carry some kind of bitterness and frustration about a relationship more than they actually want it to be healed. So it's a perfectly valid question. Jesus could be like, maybe you prefer the status quo. Maybe you've just given up and settled in. And you would be like, no, I don't care. But I want you to notice Jesus isn't even asking like, what do you want? He's offering the man what he's ready to do for him. Do you want to be healed? And I want to just pause there for a second and say, whoever you are, Jesus sees you too. And you may be sitting there and thinking, people like this get attention, or groups like this get his focus, or if I could pray better, or pray right, whatever that means, if I could do better or be better, then Jesus would take notice of you. And I just wanna say on the authority of a story like this, Jesus sees you. And he knows a lot of your backstory. He recognizes things that are true of you, what you struggle with, what you're afraid of, what your doubts are, what your questions are for him. But then this is so important because we see next on top of Jesus' compassion, there's Jesus' authority. And it's so cool because the man has just explained to Jesus, I don't have anyone who can get me to the water first when it's troubled, when it's stirred. And Jesus isn't like, well, cool, let me hang out with you. And when that happens again, I'll be your go-to guy, right? What does he do? He says, get up. Take up your bed and walk. Three imperatives back to back to back where Jesus is saying, I don't need a superstitious spring over here. I don't need magic from my fingertips. Jesus is saying, I have the inherent power and authority. I who created those legs in the first place that don't now work, I can recreate simply by speaking. It's like the God at the beginning of time who simply spoke, let there be light, let there be land, let there be animals, let there be man, kind, is now speaking. to a man who's been in this condition for 38 years, and it says, and at once, it's the word immediately, the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked. Now, I want you to pause and just think about what a miracle that is. It's not just going to someone and saying, oh, you can't walk. Well, walk. I'm your physical therapist. Here, we're gonna do this together. 38 years, between my senior year of high school and my freshman year of college, I had two reconstructive surgeries on this knee. ACL, different stuff, cleaning it all out from a sports injury. And after a few weeks of kind of immobilizing that, icing that, letting the inflammation go down, and then simply sitting on the edge of a desk, and so my leg is hanging like this, and trying to lift my leg just to get it straight, your mind's sitting there like, okay, go, and literally nothing happens. The leg does not move at all. That's two weeks of atrophy, two weeks of uselessness. You imagine 38 years of that, the atrophy, the disfiguration, the distortion of bone and tendon and ligament and muscle that Jesus just speaks and there's this instant reversal of a process of years because he has authority. And I speak that for your encouragement. You may be looking at something and saying, well, if it was gonna be fixed, it would have been fixed back here. Now it's beyond fixable. And I think sometimes God does that. He allows something literally to get beyond fixable so that you understand when it's cured, when it's healed, when you get the renewal. And it may not be physical. It may not be financial. It may be in your emotions. It may be in your thinking correctly about something, your spiritual life. But when it happens, you know that was God. That was God's power. That was God's authority. And I want to also challenge us with this because everyone who passed by this man and knew you've been there year after year after year after every feast and festival, I'm now 38 years old and every time I've come to this pond, you're there. I've never not seen you. And do you think in your mind that you see certain people or certain situations, maybe it's yourself in some way, maybe it's someone else, but you think that's not fixable. That addiction is not fixable. That cancer is not fixable, that MS, that dementia. And again, I'm talking about physical things, but that financial thing, that person's emotions. I mean, they're so all over the place. And maybe they have an actual diagnosis of something. And I'm not in any way belittling that. But you're like, they have this diagnosis. They cannot be fixed. We just have to cope now and give them tools to be their best version of themselves. Imagine what authority Jesus has in your life to do what he wants to do, what he wills to do, what he's encouraging you to pray in faith for. We're not saying name it and claim it. You get whatever you pray for. But I think sometimes we don't even believe Jesus has that kind of power or authority in our lives to bring healing maybe through something impossible. So we see Jesus' authority. Finally, and I don't want you to miss this detail, we see Jesus' reconciliation because verse 14, where did the healed man go? He went to the temple. Remember this series of stories where what's Jesus getting ticked off about? He's getting ticked off over human barriers to people being reconciled to God. He's mad about like the money changers and the marketeers who are blocking the way for particularly Gentiles, but for anyone to come and worship the father and to be made right with him. And here's yet another story that for 38 years, this man was that close. to being able to go and present himself, his own sacrifice. Lord, here's what I saved for to give to you because I love you and I worship you and I'm thankful for your forgiveness. And he couldn't do it. But Jesus, because he's fixed his body and he's fixed him holistically, now this man is able to go up to the temple, maybe for the first time in his life. And I just see Jesus, again, he's not just being like, be healed, go your way, go live whatever life you want to live. The real goal is not just removing the atrophy. The real goal is not just removing the social stigma. Those are all important. The real goal is not just removing the hopelessness. The real goal is removing his sin and anything that would prevent him from going up and saying, I can freely worship God. And by the way, there is a hint in this story that his condition had something to do with his sin. And I'll be very clear, if you're looking at your own life or you're looking at someone else's life and you're like, well, they had this injury, they had this accident, they got this disease, this thing, I judge myself, maybe I did something wrong, maybe they did something wrong, that's not the testimony of Scripture throughout. You know, frankly, things like cancer are unfair. It's not like you can point to someone and say, oh, OK, we know what that person's life is like. You can't. The rain falls on the just and the unjust. Some of the best people I know that are walking with God, really terrible things happen to them. So I'm not asking you to look at that. But Jesus says basically, go and stop sinning so that nothing worse happens to you. And he's implying, Son, we know something between you and me. And I'm not gonna shame you here in public, but let this healing be more than just your body, your emotions, the social reconnection to society. I wanna make you a worshiper. I wanna let you know your sins are forgiven. Now go walk in this newness of life that I've given you. So we've seen our situation, we've seen our Savior. Now let's look at our Sabbath breaker for just a moment. Because I want you to notice that what happens next is maybe startling to us. You would think all these religious people going up for a feast, celebrating like God, if it's the Passover, like God brought his people out of bondage in Egypt. He is the bondage breaker. And we've known this man for 38 years and Jesus again is the bondage breaker. Isn't he good? And no one's saying that. This is the Jews and particularly religious leaders are following this guy around and being like, hey, wait a second, you can't carry your mat, buddy. It's the Sabbath. You can't carry your mat and you can't just get up and walk for the first time on the Sabbath. It's the Sabbath, okay? What's Jesus doing? I want you to notice Jesus broke Sabbath tradition. He did. When I say Jesus broke Sabbath tradition, I'm not saying he broke scripture. What you need to understand is around the written word of God, that old covenant that the Jews had, the Pharisees and people like them had added 39 categories of things that you couldn't do on the Sabbath. And they're like, to help you not break the Sabbath, we're going to put the rules way out here. You know, and there's a wisdom to that in your own life. You're like, if I know I'm getting too close to this and that would be sin, I would be wise in my life to build boundaries a little further back. The only thing is the Jews have done that for everyone. And they say, our rules are as good as God's rules. You got to practice all the rules. And carrying something from one place to another was one of the 39 categories of work. And they're saying, you can't do that. And I kind of love his answer. He's like, well, that's a curious thing because the guy that healed me from the thing that I've had for 38 years, he's the one that told me. So you're going to have to take it up with him. By the way, I wish before God that we as followers of Jesus today had somewhat of that attitude when our culture comes and is like, well, you can't do that. You can't practice that. Nobody believes that. And we're just like, well, that's funny, because the guy that forgave my sins said I could. So that's just where I'm landing, is I'm gonna do the thing, and I'm gonna believe the thing, because the guy that went to the cross and then came back from the dead told me to, and he has more authority in my life than you do. And that's kind of what I see as the posture of this man. He told me to, well, who is he? Well, I don't know, I gotta go figure it out. Jesus comes, meets him in the temple, says it's me, and he's like, okay, now, okay, that's who you are. Goes off, kind of tattles on him, says, well, it's Jesus of Nazareth. But what I want you to see is the Jews are getting really worked up, especially the religious leaders, and saying, you can't do these kinds of things. But in breaking Sabbath tradition, Jesus fulfilled the heart of Sabbath. That's really what he's doing. I don't have time this morning to take a deep dive on Sabbath. We did it not too long ago in the fall. We were going through that gospel apprenticeship series and different practices of what it looks like to follow Jesus. One of the basic 10 practices of following Jesus is this thing called Sabbath. It's one of the 10 commandments. We're still called to do it as New Testament followers of Jesus. But let me just overview in like 30 seconds. We learned in that sermon from Exodus 20, Exodus 31, Leviticus 25, and Deuteronomy 5 about the real meaning and purpose of the Sabbath. And the four key things were this. The Sabbath exists, one, to reflect on and delight in God and his good gifts. Two, the Sabbath exists to signify our dependence on God's grace rather than our own performance. Thirdly, the Sabbath exists to declare our trust in God's provision. Fourthly, the Sabbath exists to celebrate our freedom in Christ from every form of slavery. Okay, you just take those four things that Old Testament says, this is what the Sabbath is all about. Do you see how Jesus is doing every single one of these things for this man? He's like, you have lived a life of physical and emotional and psychological exhaustion. Now you're free. Does that not fulfill the heart of Sabbath? to liberate a man from the layer after layer after layer of bondage and say, walk free, son, rest. Go worship at the temple, go worship your God and enjoy His gifts in your life. Enjoy His grace in your life because you didn't even ask for the healing. I came to you, I found you, I saw you. And all you could tell me is like, no, there's no one here who can help me. And I just did the thing to make you whole. And the fact that Jesus does this, the fact that Jesus has a conversation to say, you were broken, now go and worship and dance and rejoice in God and his gifts in your life. And the religious leaders are over here and the text says this, they're like, he has to die. Can you imagine that? The guy who is teaching us the real meaning and heart of Sabbath and has the authority in someone's life to liberate him, we're like, he's got to die. And we know it's a sham, right? The religious leaders are a sham. I think what it's all about is Jesus is coming in right next to the temple where he is not recognized as anything. And he shows everyone, this is what real compassion looks like. And this is what real power looks like. And the religious leaders have neither. They have no compassion. They have no authority. They have no power to fix anybody. They can't even fix themselves. And that brings us to our final point, our substitute. Because once the Jews learn Jesus' identity, you're the one who healed him. You're the one that showed us up on the Sabbath day. How dare you? Verse 16 says, and this is why the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. By the way, Jesus is not dumb. OK, it's not like, oh, what a coincidence. I wasn't paying. Is it Saturday again? It's Saturday. I'm really sorry, guys. I will not let this happen again. You track through the Gospels the number of times that Jesus was like, is it Sabbath again? Time for me to do another healing on the Sabbath. That's what's up. Jesus is utterly unapologetic. In fact, he doubles down. And he says, instead of apologizing to you for working on the Sabbath, what I'm gonna do is tell you my father, not our father, my father is working and I'm doing his work. And they all don't understand exactly what he's saying because nobody said my father about God. They would say he's our father, like the father of our nation, the father of our people. No one said he's my father. Jesus says my father. And they're like, you're making yourself equal with God. And he's like, that's right, I am because I am. God. And verse 18, this was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own father, making himself equal with God. And I don't want you to miss this point. Jesus healed the invalid, but there was a tremendous cost to Jesus. There was an exchange. There was a substitution. There was a reversal. The invalid was healed because Jesus is now broken. The invalid is now free to walk around, but Jesus isn't, because now he's gonna be chased. Now he's gonna be pursued everywhere he goes. The invalid was liberated, but Jesus was persecuted. The invalid became an insider, but Jesus became an outsider. The invalid is now more fully alive than he's ever been because Jesus signed his own death warrant. And this is what I want you to hear in the gospel. Jesus doesn't just fly down here, shoot power out of His fingertips and like, be healed, be healed, be healed, be healed. Peace out. I'm out of here. I'll see you on the other side. Salvation doesn't work that way. Our sin has a cost. Our brokenness, our unbelief has a cost. And what I'm saying with this last point is Jesus comes and he's showing us a picture of the gospel. It's like my body will break so that your body's healed. My blood will be poured out so that your blood can be restored and not only coursed through your veins, but coursed through your life before God forever brought home and right with him, forgiven and free. So family, don't miss how much Jesus loves you. Because even if you were the only sinner on earth, he would have done the same exchange for you, just for you. I see your brokenness, I see your pain, give it to me, ultimately give it to me. We live in a very broken world with a lot of pain that's unfair, but in the end he'll say, give me all the brokenness, give me all the hopelessness, let me take it all, and you'll be free forever. So in the end here, one, will you receive this Jesus? And maybe someone here, you're not a follower of Jesus this morning and you need to come to Him this morning and just let Him be your God. Just say, today's the day that He saves me, that He rescues me. I need this. I'm weak. I'm broken. I'm hopeless. You're telling me I can receive this Jesus and I get his compassion, his authority and his reconciliation in my life by faith? And the answer is yes. It's exactly what scripture says. You can do it right now. Most of you who would say, you know, you're already Christians, you're already following Jesus. Okay, good. Then remove all of your yes buts in your life. Trust God without conditions, without objections, without all these caveats to like, well, pray this in Jesus' name, but you know your will be done, because I just never get what I want. Just pray in faith. Just trust His compassion, trust His authority. Then, family, worship, and we're gonna do that in just a moment. Like, sing with all your heart. Jesus didn't rescue you from your brokenness just so you could go on your way and do your thing. He rescued you like this man so you could go up to the temple as it were and worship, so you could rejoice in the God of your salvation. But let it be a life of worship, not just a Sunday of worship. And then finally, go and share this good news. Because again, here's this theme, putting it all back together. Jesus fulfills the Sabbath by healing the helpless and hopeless at the cost of his own life. That is really good news, family. If there was anything to the superstition about the troubling of the water, man, that is a cruel thing in a way, isn't it? Would you try to get there first? If you knew it's a zero sum game. If I get there first, that means you don't get the healing. If you get there first, it means I don't get the healing. And I don't think Jesus is playing zero-sum games in our life where it's like, well, if you get the grace, then these people over here don't. We can all come and we all get the grace because he circumvents the superstitious pool and just says, get up. And he could have gone to the next person and said, can you do that for me? Rabbi, Jesus, I believe. He would have said, get up, get up, get up. Everybody get up. But they're too busy. It's the Sabbath. We don't do stuff like that. My point is you have this good news that you can share and share and share and share and share, and it will never diminish what you're getting. It will only increase your joy to see other people coming home through the same Jesus to the same loving father. Did you just listen to a recording of a sermon from Grace City Church in Denver, Colorado? We hope you can join us in person soon. Thanks for listening. The Lord bless you and keep you. Amen.