Miracle at the Pool | John 5 | Gary Hamrick

[Music] for this morning we're gonna be here in john chapter five so if you'll take your bibles and go to john chapter five if you're new here to cornerstone we we go straight through the bible cover to cover and then we start over and do it again and so we're here in our journey through the bible in john chapter 5 and i'm going to read the first nine verses john 5 starting at verse 1. it says 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 which is called in hebrew bethesda having five porches in these lay a great multitude of sick people blind lame paralyzed waiting for the moving of the water four an angel went down at a certain time into the pool and stirred up the water and then whoever stepped in first after the stirring of the water was made well of whatever disease he had verse 5 now a certain man was there who had an infirmity 38 years when jesus saw him lying there and knew that he already had been in that

condition a long time he said to him do you want to be made 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 rise take up your bed and walk and immediately the man was made well took up his bed and walked let's pause there and pray lord we thank you for this time together in your word as we just set our our hearts lord to hear from you we

pray lord that whatever busy week we've had prior to coming here to your house today that we will just lay all that at your feet and just focus on your word and be receptive to what you would say to us by your holy spirit and we thank you lord for the privilege and the freedom of worshiping here bless our time and your word we love you in jesus name and everybody said amen well like the previous two sundays if you've been here two weeks ago we talked about the conversation that jesus had with nicodemus last

week we talked about the conversation that jesus had with the samaritan woman and i mentioned that those two conversations were unique to the gospel of john not found anywhere else in the bible outside of john's gospel the same is true about this story we come to this encounter that jesus has with this paralyzed man and this story is found only here in john's gospel i've mentioned to you through the course of going through john's gospel thus far that john mentions the fewest number of jesus's miracles compared to the other gospels matthew mark and luke but

and he only mentions eight john only mentions eight but of those eight six are unique to john's gospel not found anywhere else and this is one of those miracles it's found only here in john's gospel and so let me just kind of go through this story with you and then i've got two angles two kind of perspectives to this story that i'll be sharing with you near the end but let's just first understand what's happening here the story takes place verse 1 tells us in jerusalem it says that jesus has gone there for one of

the jewish feasts now it doesn't say which one in particular we can assume that it was one of the three major feasts that every jewish male 21 years and older was required to make pilgrimage to jerusalem to celebrate and those three feasts were passover pentecost and tabernacles so it's probably one of those and jesus is here in jerusalem and we find that this story takes place it says near the sheep gate now there were different gates around the walled city of jerusalem the sheep gate was located on the northeastern part of the wall and it

was the gate through which a men would bring their sheep for sacrifice at the temple there was one designated gate to bring in your sheep you don't just haul lamb chops through any any gate willy-nilly you're going to bring him through the sheep gate so this story takes place in the northern quadrant of the city of jerusalem near the sheep gate and it tells us that near the sheep gate there's a pool there a freshwater pool that is um serviced by a freshwater spring underground and it's called the pool of bethesda now bethesda in hebrew

it's just an english transliteration of two hebrew words beit beth hessed means house of mercy so now picture this i don't think it's coincidental that the man who needed mercy is going to find mercy from the lamb near the sheep gate in a pool called mercy this is a wonderful picture here of just the the compassion of jesus the healing virtue of jesus all coming together in this one merciful moment to bring healing to this unnamed guy who has been an invalid for 38 years now for the longest time bible scholars and archaeologists questioned whether

john was making up this story and the reason was because the pool of bethesda was not discovered it was unknown in terms of its location for centuries liberal theologians and unbelievers dismissed this story as made up and then it contributed to the idea that perhaps the whole gospel of john is not really reliable because if he's writing about a pool that doesn't exist in jerusalem then perhaps his whole book should be brought into question uh and so that was the thought for centuries we're not really sure if john's a reliable eyewitness he talks about this

pool of bethesda in verse in chapter five and there is no pool of bethesda not near the sheepgate at least well then there was this wonderful discovery in the late 19th century in 1888 a german archaeologist by the name of conrad schick he discovered the pool of bethesda i just love it when archaeology and or science eventually catches up with the bible don't you love that upon further excavation in 1956 archaeologists unearthed a rectangular pool with a portico on each side and a fifth portico dividing two rectangular pools that were somewhat terraced right there near

the sheepgate that they've identified as the pool of bethesda and having these five porches around the four perimeters and then one in between that divided the two rectangular pools it fits exactly with verse two which tells us that the pool had five porches and so they've discovered it now and this this pool is huge it's huge the first time i went to israel in 1998 i expected to find a pool of bethesda that was something little like you'd find a kiddie pool at a community pool you know something shallow something relatively small and um instead

i was shocked when i saw a huge pool and they haven't even completely unearthed this pool because it stretches under what is today the arab quarters and they're not going to go you know demolishing arab houses in order to figure out how far this thing goes just what they have uncovered these two rectangular pools combined listen to me larger than an olympic sized swimming pool what they have uncovered larger than an olympic-sized swimming pool on one end of this of this pool it's 42 feet deep okay it's huge here's a picture it's dry now because

they've diverted the freshwater spring um but so it's dry but what you're looking at this this kind of like a combobulation of just ruins well it is because here's here's what's inside the pool of bethesda now when you go to israel and this is actually one of the places we stop on our tour and by the way a lot of you and our online viewers have signed up for the tour in march we already have over 500 people that are going so but we're going to go twice in 23 so we'll announce another one this

fall for for the fall of 23 as well but um this this pool is a place where we stop and have this bible study so those of you who are going are getting the advanced bible study those of you who can't go are going to get it now what you see inside this pool are the ruins of an ancient byzantine church that was built over the site in the 5th century a.d to commemorate this miracle from john chapter 5. during the byzantine empire in the 5th century a.d they built this church which was then demolished

when the persians made another invasion of israel in 614 a.d the persians demolished the church so what you see now are just the ruins inside the pool from the from the byzantine period that commemorates this miracle from john chapter 5. and i i want you to get a sense of when you see this visually and and when you hear the description i want you to get a sense of the enormity the size of this pool because it helps us to understand the dynamics of this story in particular verse 3 because verse 3 says a great

multitude of sick people blind lame and paralyzed used to lie around this pool well that that changes the whole dynamic of the story if you think it's just a little kiddie size pool you might be thinking a couple of people maybe a dozen maybe a little bit more no no the bible says here that a great multitude of the sick and the lame and the disease used to lay around this pool and it's bigger than an olympic-sized swimming pool so that gives perspective to this story here and by the way when it says in verse

3 a great multitude used to lie there how many is a great multitude well it's it's it's not numbered for us but comparatively speaking we can look at a couple of other places in the bible and see when that phrase a great multitude was used one is in matthew 15. in matthew 15 at the feeding of the four thousand matthew records there was a great multitude and then he ends up numbering it four thousand men and when you add women and children it was probably a miracle of like eight or ten thousand people not just

four that only counted the men mark similarly in mark chapter six when he describes the feeding of the five thousand he also says it was a great multitude and again that only counted the men when you add women and children it might have been more like 10 000 12 or more so if you use that same terminology now here in john's gospel to describe the number of sick and lame and diseased and paralyzed lying around this olympic-sized swimming pool it is possible that there were literally thousands of people lying around this pool i want you

to imagine it now we'll come back to that but i want you to understand the whole picture here let me point out verse 4 in our story because some of your bibles don't have verse 4 and when i was reading it you're like what's he reading this isn't even in my bible verse 4 says for an angel went down at a certain time into the pool and stirred up the water and then whoever stepped in first after the stirring of the water was made well of whatever disease he had now i'm reading from the new

king james version of the bible king james also has verse 4 as i just read it but uh other bibles do not have verse four they have an esv if you have an niv it omits verse four in fact in your bibles if you have one of those versions that omits it it just has verse three and then it numbers verse five and you're looking right now like there is no verse for how many of you have no verse four in your bibles okay so you're like confused when i'm reading this earlier like where is

he he's like he's not even in my bible anymore well that's because you have an inferior bible that's why no no it's not an inferior bible let me tell you why it's missing some ancient manuscripts of the bible did not have that verse and some ancient manuscripts did and and so those who were you know a part of modern translations decided to in an abundance of caution like we're going to err on the side of omitting it since in some of the ancient manuscripts that verse is not found although in some it is found so

in an abundance of caution some translations of the bible don't have it because it's not found in all the manuscripts either way it doesn't change the story it doesn't change the meaning intent and purpose of the story so it's not corrupt either way if you don't have it or if you do have it i'm going to tell you and this is just purely my opinion i'm going to tell you why i think it's good for it to be included in the bible i'm going to give you two reasons first of all because obviously some kind

of miraculous thing was happening here some kind of miraculous thing was happening here in these waters being stirred providing some kind of miraculous cure for sick people because people would lie around this pool day after day week after week month after month year after year and i guarantee you if nothing miraculous was happening people wouldn't be lying around the pool eventually people would look at each other like it's not happening is it happening for you hasn't been happening hasn't happened for years let's go home that's what they would do so something clearly is miraculously happening

in the waters for people to trample over one another to get in there first it's got to be more than just epsom salt baths here friends this has got to be more than just some medicinal prop you know you could read commentaries and they're like well it's underground spring and it bubbled up and wasn't really being stirred by angels and it was just medicinal maybe some sulfur thing or epson okay whatever maybe i don't know because it's not specific here but clearly something miraculous is happening it had to be more than just some kind of

medicinal prophecy properties of the water otherwise people wouldn't sit around just taking a bath like they'd be out of there they're rushing in because something miraculous is happening in the moment it appears to be random doesn't appear to be scheduled it appears to be at different times and people are just poised ready to go they get their miracle off they go and then it seems to suggest that a new people a new group of people cycle in and they're and they're fighting over getting in the water so clearly something is happening here secondly while this

might seem like something strange and peculiar to us the idea that could god actually send an angel stir up the waters and then there's healing miraculous virtue within the waters that seems strange and peculiar but don't dismiss it because it might seem strange and peculiar because there are a lot of things in the bible historically that god has done that to us seems strange and peculiar including various ways that god decided to heal people in unique ways example second kings chapter five we have the story of a man named naaman he's a syrian general he

has leprosy leprosy was an incurable disease at the time it's called hansen's disease now only in the last like century and a half have has there actually been a cure for leprosy uh using the cocktail of a few different antibiotic treatments but in that day in second kings five completely incurable debilitating eventually you'd die from it naaman had leprosy what did god tell him to do go to the jordan river dip yourself seven times he argued with the prophet of god he said what are you what are you kidding me i got cleaner rivers in

syria than here in the jordan i'm not gonna dip myself it's like you want a miracle or not it's like okay and so there he is seven times you know and he said he's a dignified general like this feels like a little awkward you know like i've got to be doing this little bob thing yeah but he got his miracle because that's the way god determined to heal him dip yourself seven times in the jordan there's another story in numbers chapter 21. i referenced this a few weeks ago when we were in john chapter 3

because jesus referred to it in numbers 21 it's a story of when the israelites were rebelling against god and so god said okay i'm going to get your attention and he sends venomous snakes throughout the camp in the wilderness remember this and these snakes started biting the israelites they started dying and then guess what you get bit a few times by and see your friends dropping dead from poisonous snake bites you're going to get right with god quick you know and so like all the other people like moses pray for us we don't want to

die moses intercedes and god says to moses okay and it's a little unconventional but it's what god said i want you to take a fashion a snake out of bronze put it up on the pole lift the pole up and everybody who looks at that will be healed and you won't die from the venomous venomous snake bite now jesus referred to it in john 3 because he's referring to the fact that that was a picture of when he would be lifted up on a cross everybody who looks to jesus will be saved all right but

god used that rather unconventional thing in numbers 21 to bring healing to the israelites also in isaiah chapter 38 there's a story of when king hezekiah is sick he's dying and he has an infected boil somewhere on his body and god instructs the prophet isaiah make a poultice like this like this uh formula out of figs put it on the boil and hezekiah will recover and that's exactly what happened so i think it's quite possible that when you look at the story here in john chapter 5 it's quite possible that god could have stirred these

waters for the unique purpose of healing large masses of people out of his compassion and love for the sick and the lame it may have been god's gracious provision for sick people in that day for a time but a word of caution every practice in the bible is not necessarily to become a pattern every practice in the bible is not necessarily to become a pattern just because god may have uniquely healed people in this way doesn't mean we go out okay john chapter five an angel stirring the water let's go out and plant a church

and call it first church of the healing waters no you don't need to do that and you don't need to stand at the community pool either and pray that god would send angels and stir up the water and then we're going to just throw in disabled people no like like stop that like every practice in the bible is not necessarily to become a pattern there are patterns all right in terms of healing for the sick there's a pattern in james chapter 5. it instructs the elders of the church to anoint them with oil and to

pray over the sick that's a pattern that's what we do here so that's what we'll do we pray for people who are sick we anoint them with oil that's james chapter 5. i don't go slapping fig newtons on people just because isaiah did that right because that's a unique thing that god did every practice is not necessarily a pattern so whether or not you you want to include verse 4 in your bibles or not it doesn't it doesn't make a material difference to the story itself the fact of the matter is people were getting some

kind of miraculous healing in these waters otherwise they wouldn't still be lying around these waters year after year after year god was doing something here among the great multitude lying around this pool was this man he's not named we don't know his name what we do know is that he has suffered from some debilitating condition for 38 years and whatever it was it was so debilitating that whenever the waters were stirred up he couldn't get himself into the water without help can you imagine you you've had this infirmity for 38 years you think the only

cure is to get into this water and everybody is trampling over you to get their miracle imagine how like discouraging and hopeless this guy must have felt to be sick like this for 38 years and everybody else is elbowing you and trampling over you to get into the waters so here he is in this helpless condition and in verse 6 look in your bibles jesus comes along sees the guy and he asks him a very important question which initially when you look at this question you might think you're like why didn't even bother asking this

but this is what jesus asks in verse six do you want to be made well do you want to be made well now we might read that and think why would he even ask that of course this guy's been paralyzed for 38 years who wouldn't want to be made well why why is he even asking the question i tell you why jesus is asking the question and this is a truth statement there are some people friends who simply don't want to be made well what do i mean somebody hurt them and they want to be

bitter i want to hold a grudge i don't want to forgive that person see they don't want to be made well they like being bitter they like being angry they like holding a grudge there are some people who would rather gossip so that others think that they are in the know with all that they're gossiping about rather than keeping their mouth shut they don't want to be made well they like gossiping there are people who would rather die in their sins and get right with god they don't want to be made well they like their

lifestyle there are a lot of people in the world like this they like being angry they like being bitter they like being unforgiving they they they like having their fun even if it you know is rebelling against god they like it that way and they don't want to be made well boy i hope that is not you i hope that every time that the lord kind of you know our life is like an onion and and slowly god peels back layer after layer and i hope that when he peels back certain layers in your life

and and it exposes different things about your heart that that you want god to help you instead of just deciding i'm fine the way i am don't don't enjoy being sick do you want to be made well i hope all of us would say yes lord i want to be made well i want to be healed of this i want to be helped with that i want to be forgiven of this so jesus asked a very pointed question that i think all of us should ask ourselves do we really want to be made well and

this guy did but this guy thought the only way to be made well was to get into the pool and so that's his answer in verse 7. 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 and jesus said to him verse 8 rise take up your bed and walk and immediately the man was made well took up his bed and walked and jesus just spoke the word he just spoke the word pick up

your mat and walk and instantly this guy was healed now there's actually a lot more to this story that i didn't even read with you at the beginning of the bible study and the reason is because i felt led as i was preparing for the study to just look at two different perspectives about this story there's so much more here but i just felt led that this morning we're just going to look at these two different perspectives and the first perspective is from a pastoral perspective on ministry that i i think will be helpful for

you to understand and the other perspective is this human perspective that all of us can relate to there's this human element in here that we cannot miss that all of us i'm sure can relate to at some level i'm going to start with the first perspective this first angle which is in relation to pastoral ministry and i i hope that you will not hear this as anything self-serving because i honestly share this with you to help you understand what ministry should look like and ministry doesn't always look like what we think it should look like

some of us have come to church with a certain church background a certain church perspective and we look at ministry through that church lens and i'm going to ask you to just kind of remove whatever lens you might have had up to this point and kind of have a fresh perspective of what is ministry supposed to look like again not to be self-serving but i think it'll help you and also i thought about people who may be going into the ministry in the future people watching online who might be in the ministry presently this i

think is helpful for all of us but i want to share from this first angle here uh 31 years ago i started pastoring here at cornerstone chapel when all 18 charter members asked me to become the first pastor of this startup church that was 31 years ago i can't believe where time is gone i was 11 years old at the time couldn't even drive it was hardly could shave anyway terry and i had only been married a couple of years we only had one child up to that point it was tyler he was only a

one-year-old i had never pastored a church i had not completed uh bible college i would years later i had never been to seminary and on top of all of it i was a recovering methodist okay anybody else any other recovering methodist high my name is gary welcome to my support group i'm thankful for my heritage i have to say that i have methodist pastors on both sides of my family my great-grandfather on my dad's side was a a methodist circuit writer preacher on horseback through the hills of west virginia not making it up that's why

if you're from west virginia you're probably related to me [Applause] but i can tell you that with that kind of a combination like hadn't finished bibles college hadn't been to seminary newly married uh one child and and um it became painfully aware to me early on in the ministry just how inadequate i was in trying to meet everyone's needs and that's what pastors attempt to do try to minister the flock meet people's needs meet people's needs and the list is is lengthy you know you spend time preparing the teachings praying with people in need visiting

people in the hospital going to dinners as we were invited doing all the weddings doing the funerals counseling with people taking the crisis calls in the middle of the night arbitrating disagreements and dealing with the disgruntled and and i can tell you that early on in a few years into the ministry i was just overwhelmed by it all and on top of it pastors can be so attentive to the needs of the flock that they can often neglect the needs of their own family and i've been guilty of that at times and one day about

seven or eight years into pastoring here at cornerstone our church was still relatively small i just cried out to god i was like lord i i can't do this this is too overwhelming human need and everything that everybody's going through legitimate needs legitimate crises legitimate things that people were going through would at times be overwhelming and and i thank god that over the years you know i've been able to hire staff to help supplement and complement what my gifts are not and vice versa but but for any pastor just the cry of the heart is

lord i i can't do this and i remember just you know not hearing an audible voice but in the still small voice of the lord speaking in my heart you're right you can't do this but i can and he took me to john chapter five this story became probably the most uh certainly the most pivotal story in relation to helping me to be more centered in ministry but it just had a profound impact on on my walk with the lord and and my understanding of what ministry is supposed to look like and so in this

story what what the lord showed me is something that might be obvious to us but it didn't translate for me until the lord specifically showed me i want you to again imagine an olympic-sized swimming pool with potentially thousands of people a great multitude however many that is of the of the sick the lame the disease the paralyzed lying around this huge pool talk about human need and all legitimate i mean people who are desperately sick and wanting a miracle and needing jesus to touch them but check this out among all the potentially thousands who are

around that pool listen jesus stepped over all of them to go to the one guy to whom the father directed him that is very challenging in ministry i read that and for the first time like a light bulb went off like lord you mean what ministries really about is i just need to be more tuned in to you to be sensitive who should i minister to who should i not who should i pray with who should i not who should i go visit who should i not learn to say no as much as i might

say yes whatever's in step with your will because check this out later in john 5 it's around verse 19 but you need to turn there jesus talks about how i don't do anything except the father directs me and shows me what to do in john 12 49 later in john's gospel jesus says i don't say anything except that the father tells me what to say and how to say it when you think about the ministry of jesus and how laser focused he was and only doing what the father told him to do and saying what

the father told him to say i looked at that i read this story and i said lord help me to to have ministry like that like just tuned in to what you want to happen when and where and and lord just help me to understand as much as jesus was completely tuned into the will of the father help me in a similar way and so when i when i thought of ministry this way the lord spoke to me about how you cannot this is this is important for ministry in general whether you have full-time ministry

or all of us have ministry okay you cannot be driven by the power of human need you must be directed by the power of the holy spirit and and so i'm just going to put that up there as a point for us to to see and to understand ministry can't be driven by the power of human need it must be directed by the power of the holy spirit and the lord spoke to my heart you're not responsible for everyone's needs i am the lord says you're just responsible to minister to people as i direct you

and to lead them to me and so this this story spoke to me in in that way and it relieved me of a lot of the expectations i had put on myself and some of the expectations that others had put on me about meeting everybody's needs in the church it just it just can't no pastor including the pastors on our staff and i'm very grateful for all of our pastors and all of our ministry leaders and support staff but no one can meet all the human needs in any church as wonderful as people can be

and and as wonderful as a staff that i have here at cornerstone our pastors our counselors our ministry leaders cannot meet all the demands of human need as legitimate as the needs are our job is to love you to teach you and to shepherd you to a point but mainly to direct you to the one who can meet all your needs and that's our great shepherd jesus amen does everybody understand that our pastors our counselors our ministry leaders are human too we have our faults we have our needs we have families we have trials we

have tears we have temptations too and we must not we will not and we cannot take the place of jesus for you but we will do our best to direct you to him ministry someone once said like this ministry is just one beggar helping another beggar to find bread that's our job we're just real people like you with the same struggles we're just begging for bread and we're the bread of jesus and we're helping other beggars to find the same bread in jesus too so please don't idolize us please don't put us on pedestals please

don't have unrealistic expectations pray for us you understand the enemy works overtime on people in ministry pray for our families pray for our marriages pray for our kids pray for our church pray for us i remember years ago when god started speaking this to my heart about listen just be focused on what i want you to do and don't try to run around trying to meet everybody's needs okay i remember when i first put this to test i was just like really i was reluctant i was relieved that the lord had shown me this i

was also reluctant because i knew i knew that there would be some people who would not understand so like this is like 25 years ago okay when the lord first started showing me this stuff first time i tested it there was this dear lady in our church not not here any longer and she came up to me and she said pastor gary i believe that my husband and me and our kids are supposed to move to virginia beach the lord is just putting virginia beach on my heart i believe we're supposed to move there and

i'd like you to pray with me to that end because um i don't even want to tell my husband yet but the lord has put on my heart would you pray with me that if it's the lord's will that he'll move my husband's heart and and our kids and we'll go as a family and as she's asking me this this whole thing is going through my head like okay lord jesus certainly did what you told him to do say what you told him to say and ministered where he told the minister is this something you

want me to do i'm just like quietly throwing that prayer up as she's talking to me so she makes this request which is like a normal request would you pray for me i have a need and as she's asking me i felt in my heart the lord say do not pray with her like i just like oh great god you know when like he tells you to do something you're like ah i don't i don't really want to do this but i've asked i've asked for you to help me with this so she gets to

ask you this wonderful little you know prayer request says so would you pray with me and this is after church one day about 25 years ago i looked right in her eyes and i said no i will not and she looked at me and she kind of like jolted back like what kind of an unloving unpastoral thing is that that was in her facial expression she didn't say it i think it was her eyes looked far worse than that let me tell you it's like and and she said excuse me and i said yeah i'm

sorry i'm not going to pray with you and she was mad and left the church left the church i was just like okay lord you know i can't wait till you try it again i'm going to clean the whole church out and we only had a couple hundred people at the time i'm just like yeah well pick them off one by one i'm going to say no i'm not going to pray for you no i'm not going to minister you no i'm not going to visit in the hospital no no no do you know about

a month later she came back to the church she came up to me and she apologized she said pastor i have to apologize i was angry at you i was like really so i was mad at you because you wouldn't pray with me she said i went home i told my husband you wouldn't pray with me about this and she said you know what he said i said what's that she said that he said well i'll pray with you she said to me pastor my husband has never in our married life prayed with me not

once he's never done bible study with me not once she said he prayed with me about moving to virginia beach and that started something in his heart where he started wanting to do bible study with me he's been praying with me and doing bible study with me since you told me no thank you for saying no to me yeah praise god so thank you for your prayers it's important the other quick angle to this story and i've really already run out of time but i'm going to do my best to summarize this second angle because

it's important human perspective to this story so okay jesus is directed by the father to step over countless people to go to the one to whom the father directed him to heal on that particular day but what about everyone else why didn't anyone else get healed that day why didn't jesus just say the same words out loud to everybody at the pool and everybody would have gotten up and been healed that day these are the kind of questions that honest people wrestle with today why didn't my spouse get healed why didn't my child survive why

didn't my marriage get restored why didn't my parents stay together people asking things like i mean if god can do anything why doesn't he do something for me i'm sure that there were some people plenty of people around the pool that day who saw this guy get his miracle and they were wondering but what about my miracle am i not as important as this guy does god only care about the one and not about all the rest of us have you ever felt maybe you haven't said it this way have you ever felt stepped over

in regards to your miracle like god did something for someone else but not for you i don't want to shy away from the tough questions and i get these kind of questions and this is a real question when you look at this story there were countless people who did not get a miracle that day only the one guy did and you can wonder why god why did you step over others and they were not healed and the one guy was and i don't think it's a cop-out to say in fact i think it's important to

admit we just don't know there are some things in life this side of heaven we will not be able to understand we will not be able to grasp with our human capacity to understand the heart and mind of god why he does something miraculous for one person and not for another in a similar way why he doesn't seem to answer this prayer but he does answer that prayer there are going to be plenty of things in the course of our lives that don't necessarily make sense this side of heaven and we cannot get our theological

underwear all twisted up by coming out with an answer for which there is no answer and i've heard people probably well-intentioned people say things they might have been well-intentioned but it was not well thought out people who think they have to have an answer for situations that just don't have an answer this side of heaven it's going to be tucked away in the heart of god and we have to stop saying things to try to make an answer for something that doesn't have a human explanation example i remember years ago doing a funeral for a

baby who had died of sids and a well-intentioned lady who just hadn't well thought out her words said to the parents well you know i'm sure jesus just needed another angel in heaven and i just i wanted to leap across the casket and say to that lady do you have any understanding the pain you just inflicted like do you think that really helps well jesus just needed another angel back up in heaven like why are we saying things like this why are we trying to come up with these theological or trite answers for things that

we just have to admit you know what i don't i don't have i don't have the magnitude of god's mind to understand his heart in all things but here's what i do know and this is an important takeaway from this okay when i don't understand god's ways i have to cling to god's worth that he is good even when times aren't that is important for every single one of us because if it hasn't happened already there will likely come a time in your life where something happens or didn't happen that doesn't make sense to you

and it's easy to get angry with god it's easy to question god it's easy it's easy to get you know frustrated with god and and by the way he can handle our emotions you read the psalms there's plenty of raw emotion in the psalms i'm not saying like you can never get upset with god like his feelings are going to get hurt like god understands our human capacity he understands our human limitations he gets our emotion he created us but when we are in those moments of frustration and feeling like i don't have an answer

for this and why god that's when we have to cling to his worth when we don't understand his ways and trust that because he's good that's his worth he is good he is holy he is just he is righteous in all his ways then even when i don't understand i'm going to trust him because he's a good god when my times are not good he still is good so i have to defer and say lord i don't get it and i don't pretend to get it and this hurts and this is confusing but nevertheless i

trust you because you're good and so even though this side of heaven i may not understand it i'm gonna i'm gonna lean into you and i'm gonna trust you listen this is what david did and i'll close with this out of psalm 22 the first verse of psalm 22 jesus quotes on the cross and this is what david wrote in psalm 22 first five verses my god my god why have you forsaken me why are you so far from helping me and from the words of my groaning oh my god i cry in the daytime

but you do not hear and in the night season and am not silent listen he says but you are holy you are holy enthroned in the praises of israel what's he doing he's saying i don't understand this doesn't make sense i don't feel like you're even answering my prayers but i know that you're good because you're holy and you're just and you're pure and you're enthroned on the praises of israel and he says our fathers trusted in you they trusted and you delivered them they cried to you and were delivered they trusted in you and

we're not ashamed and that's where we have to get to you know paul said to the church at corinth in first corinthians 13 he said now i know in part right we only have a limited understanding and knowledge of what's happening in our world and in our lives now i know in part he says but then one day when i'm with you then i will know fully even as i am fully known until then we cling to god's worth and we press into him and we trust him in jesus name let's pray together father we

thank you for your word and we thank you for the story so much more in that story lord that we could have dug out but we just thank you lord for these two perspectives and i pray right now for those who are just really clinging to you because some things have happened in their lives that don't make sense they feel perhaps like others around the pool that day like they've been stepped over they didn't get their miracle they've been stepped over and lord maybe their miracle is still to come and maybe not because there are

some things we just don't understand like and it's okay for us to acknowledge that we don't always grasp what you're up to why you did some things and not other things we know in part but one day one day it'll make more sense when we're standing in your presence we will know fully even as we are fully known until then lord we press into you and we trust you and i pray for a special measure of your grace today for those who just really need you lord those who've been hurting those who have been struggling

in their faith and trying to trust you in the midst of their pain lord would you reveal yourself in a personal way to them tenderly loving them through their trial reminding them that even though sometimes they might feel stepped over you see them you haven't forgotten them and we trust you lord because you are holy and you are enthroned on the praises of your people we trust you lord we thank you for your word in jesus name and all god's people say amen and amen god bless you all