Healing the Hurts You Don’t Deserve:
The Healing Choice
Scripture Reading: John 5:1-9a
Like so many things, you can’t comprehend it
unless you see it with your own eyes.
In central California,
on the western slopes
of the Sierra Nevada mountain range,
grows a kind of tree that is one of the wonders
of God’s creation:
Trees that look like skyscrapers,
trees so big around that if one were
growing right here it would reach from me to the back door,
giant sequoia and redwood trees.
And in most of the parks where those trees are protected, rangers can show you a cross section of one of those trees,
and show you how the rings of the tree
tell the story of that tree’s life, year by year.
Here’s a thin ring, a year when the tree hardly grew at all because of a drought;
Here’s a couple thick rings, reflecting healthy years, when the tree grew by leaps and bounds;
Here’s where the tree was struck by lightning;
Here’s a year of savage blight and disease;
Here’s a fairly normal year of growth.
“And that’s the way it is with us,” says Dr. David Seamands, in his groundbreaking book, Healing for Damaged Emotions. “Just . . . beneath the protective bark, the concealing, protective mask, are the recorded rings of our lives.”
There are scars of ancient, painful hurts . . .
There are wounds that never properly healed . . .
There are more recent injuries,
something someone said,
something someone did,
something someone neglected to do.
Some go so deep
that they shape who you are even today,
and some are so incredibly sore
that it just takes a word
or a look
to open the scab,
and create fresh hurt on top of hurt--
the hurts you don’t deserve.
Good morning. My name is Bob Hostetler, and
this morning at Cobblestone Community Church we begin a four-week series of messages from the Bible, entitled “Healing the Hurts You Don’t Deserve.”
You see, many of us here are intent on
launching a new, distinctive, and dynamic church here in the Oxford area next Palm Sunday, April 8.
And yet there are things to be done,
things that--if we are wise--we will take care of before we proceed very far in that process.
And so, just as a dentist cleans out all the decay from a cavity before filling it,
just as a housepainter scrapes off all the flaking paint from the house before applying a new coat,
so we want to begin this venture by asking God’s help in cleaning out any detritus and deadwood that may be in our hearts and souls so that we can start this new venture with whole hearts,
clear minds,
and clean hands.
So let me ask you to turn in your Bibles please to the Gospel of John.
If you worship here regularly, I encourage you to get in the habit of bringing your Bible with you to read for yourself--and even mark in--your own Bible.
If you’re here without a Bible of your own this morning, no sweat, that’s why we put a couple copies in the center of each table.
And if you don’t have a Bible of your own, please take one of ours home with you.
So, having said all that,
please open your Bible to the Gospel of John,
the fourth book in the New Testament
--that’s Matthew-Mark-Luke-John if you’re new to the Bible like Jim Lillibridge is--
John, chapter five
--that’s one-two-three-four-five if you’re new to numbers like Deb Saas is--
John 5, and we’re going to study verses 1-9 this morning and see what God’s Word, the Bible, can teach us about healing the hurts we don’t deserve.
Look with me at John chapter five, as I read aloud from the New International version:
Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for a feast of the Jews.
2 Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades.
3 Here a great number of disabled people used to lie--the blind, the lame, the paralysed.
5 One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years.
6 When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, "Do you want to get well?"
7 "Sir," the invalid replied, "I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me."
8 Then Jesus said to him, "Get up! Pick up your mat and walk."
9 At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.
We’ll stop right there; the story continues, because the healing of that man created a stir among the more religious people of that day.
But that’s not what I’m going to ask you to concentrate on this morning. Rather, there are three things I’ll ask you to notice about what took place at that Pool of Bethesda that day, and the first is:
I What Jesus Saw
If you’ll look at verse 1, you’ll see that John describes Jesus going up to Jerusalem for one of the many feasts in the Jewish calendar. As William Barclay says,
John always shows Jesus attending the feasts for [he] did not disregard the obligations of Jewish worship.
And in verse 2, John tells us about the pool of Bethesda, a pool whose existence was questioned for years by many influential so-called Bible scholars. . . until, that is, a construction project near the Church of St. Anne in 1888 uncovered traces of a pool with five colonnades exactly where John said it was.
It was there at the Pool of Bethesda that Jesus encountered a man, as verse 5 says, who had been an invalid for 38 years--which means this man
had needed healing since before Jesus was born!
But it’s the first part of verse 6 I want to draw your attention to. Look at that verse, where it tells us what Jesus saw:
Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time. . .
That’s all the farther I’ll ask you to read for now.
Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time. . .
Now keep in mind, John has just told us, in verse 3:
Here a great number of disabled people used to lie--the blind, the lame, the paralysed.
This hurting man was surrounded by “a great number” of people . . . and yet
Jesus saw him lying there. . .
And I want to take just a minute here to encourage you with the Word of God this morning, because I fully believe that what was true that day beside the Pool of Bethesda is true today here as well.
I want to say to anyone here today who is hurting, first:
1. You’re not alone. It’s not just you.
There is “a great number” of hurting people all around you right now. If you were to take a good look around this room, you would see “a great number of disabled people,” hurting people,
people who don’t have it all together,
people with scars,
people with wounds so deep and some so incredibly sore
that it just takes a word
or a look
to open the scab,
and create fresh hurt on top of hurt,
as I said before.
But remember, I asked you to notice what Jesus saw. What was it?
Jesus saw him lying there. . .
The second thing I would point out to you is:
2. Jesus sees. He is not oblivious to your pain,
to your hurt,
to your need.
Just as he saw that man and learned--
whether through human or divine means, we don’t know--but
he learned that he’d been there a long time,
and he knows just how long,
how much,
how deeply
you’ve been hurting, too.
You see, a lot of us Christians fail to do what Jesus did by the Pool of Bethesda; we fail to acknowledge the reality of people’s hurts.
We avoid the subject because it makes us uncomfortable--for any number of reasons.
Or we communicate to people, “You’re not supposed to hurt. If you were a real Christian, if you were truly spiritual, you wouldn’t feel this way.”
Or we offer surface answers to deep hurts, saying, “Just pray. Have more faith. Let go and let God.”
YUCK, MAN! Do we think people are stupid?
Jesus didn’t do that.
Jesus saw him lying there. . .
That’s an important line. Don’t miss it. Jesus saw the man’s hurt and knew that it was real, and it had been real for a long time.
But you may ask, “What about all those other people at the pool? The Bible says there were a “great number” of them. Did Jesus pass them by?”
I have no idea.
Maybe not. Maybe he healed others whose stories have not been preserved for us--after all, John himself admits, 15 chapters later in his book:
Jesus did many other miraculous signs . . . which are not recorded in this book (John 20:30, NIV).
But then again, maybe he did pass by the others. Maybe he knew somehow that only this man was ready for the next thing I want to point out to you, and that is:
II What Jesus Asked
Let’s read verse six in its entirety now:
When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, "Do you want to get well?"
Now that is not a stupid question.
A lot of people don’t really want to be healed;
they don’t really want to be made whole.
Does that sound crazy? It’s not, because saying “yes” to Jesus’ question "Do you want to get well?" means two things. It means, first of all:
1. Admitting your hurt.
Some of us,
if Jesus were to walk up to us right now and ask, "Do you want to get well?"
would say,
“Whaddya mean, Lord?
I’m fine, really.
Don’t worry about me; go help Greg Killius, he’s the one with problems.”
But "Do you want to get well?"
If you do, it’s gonna mean admitting your hurt. . . to yourself,
to God,
maybe even to a few trusted friends.
But that’s not all. Saying “yes” to Jesus’ question also means:
2. Choosing healing over hurt.
When Jesus asked, "Do you want to get well?" it was not a rhetorical question, nor was he being flippant.
William Barclay observes that
Invalidism is not [always] unpleasant. Someone else does all the working and worrying.
And another Bible scholar points out that
An Eastern beggar often loses a good living by being cured.
So, you see, some of those people by the Pool of Bethesda may not have chosen healing over hurt, if healing meant
losing their income,
leaving their friends,
or no longer being able to lean on others.
And likewise, some of us actually choose to hold onto our hurts,
because we would rather complain,
we’re not done seething in anger at those who hurt us,
because we know it’ll take WORK to get better, and besides,
we rather like the sympathy we get,
or the attention,
or the feeling of playing the martyr.
But Jesus asks, "Do you want to get well?"
If you do, then it’s gonna mean admitting your hurt and choosing healing over hurt.
But there’s just one more gem I would point out to you from this short passage in the rich mine of God’s Word, the Bible, and that is, notice:
III What Jesus Said
Look with me at verse 7. After Jesus asked the crippled man by the pool, "Do you want to get well?":
7 "Sir," the invalid replied, "I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me."
Now, let me stop there and just explain. There’s reason to believe that after John wrote his Gospel, later copyists thought it necessary to explain what the man is talking about. That’s why, in modern versions of the Bible, there is no verse 4, because that verse doesn’t appear in the earliest manuscripts available to us. It was probably a later addition that was trying to explain that the water in the pool would occasionally be stirred, like a hot spring, and that it was believed that the first person into the pool would receive the maximum benefit of the water’s healing powers.
So that’s what the man meant when said,
"I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me."
Do you see what he’s saying about the depth of his hurt? He’s saying, “I’m not only crippled, but:
#1, “I’m friendless: I have no one to help me.”
#2, “I’m flailing: While I am trying to get in. . . ” I’m straining and struggling and flailing, and it’s not doing any good.
#3, “I’m frustrated: someone else goes down ahead of me."
Does any of that ring a bell with you?
Doesn’t that sound like so many of us, in our hurts . . . friendless,
flailing,
frustrated?
But it’s what happens next that I most want to direct your attention to. Look at verses 8 and 9:
8 Then Jesus said to him, "Get up! Pick up your mat and walk."
9 At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.
Now, please notice that Jesus apparently didn’t TOUCH the man, or even point to him . . .
He said, "Get up! Pick up your mat and walk."
John doesn’t tell us whether it was Jesus’ words,
or a wave
or just his will
that healed the man.
But it’s clear: Jesus had the power to heal him,
and he did.
But notice something else that I believe is operating here:
Jesus told a man
who couldn’t even drag himself into the pool
TO GET UP!
And the man did!
Why? How?
I believe it’s because, for some reason,
the man believed Jesus could heal him.
And I believe also that there are hurting people here who need to believe Jesus can heal you.
The Bible says,
He heals the broken-hearted and binds up their wounds (Psalm 147:3).
And
This is what the high and lofty One says--he who lives for ever, whose name is holy: “I live in a high and holy place, but also with him who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite” (Isaiah 57:15).
God is able and willing to heal your hurts, and I believe he is saying to you this morning, “I am with you. I want to revive your spirit and restore your heart.”
But don’t miss the fact that Jesus said to the man by the Pool of Bethesda,
"Get up! Pick up your mat and walk."
In other words, “It’s time for you to leave your hurt behind. Pick up your mat and walk.”
I think God is also saying to many in this room, “It’s time to leave your hurt behind. Pick up your mat and walk. Choose healing over hurt. Take the first step.”
Will you do that this morning?
Will you believe in God’s goodness and grace?
Will you believe that he wants to revive your spirit
and restore your heart?
Will you admit your hurt?
Will you make the healing choice?
Will you pick up your mat and walk?
Will you pray with me silently as I pray aloud:
Lord Jesus,
I believe you.
I believe in your goodness and grace.
I believe that you want to help me heal.
And I’m willing today to admit that I’m hurting.
I’m willing--help me be more and more willing as this week goes on--to choose healing over hurt, to make the healing choice,
and take a step at a time
toward healing and wholeness.
Help me, Lord,
heal me,
in the healing name of Jesus I pray, Amen.
I invite you to continue calling out to God
in the final moments of our time together . . .
And as we sing a final chorus or two,
if you’d like someone to talk to or to pray with you,
--if there’s anything we can pray with you about--
a few counselors are going to be
joining me right here
wearing a name tag like this one;
you can just come up and shake our hand,
and we’ll take it from there.
We’ll even stand around here for a few minutes after the service, if you find that a little easier. . .
But whatever you decide,
please continue to submit your hurts to God
as we sing, and let him begin--or continue--
the healing process in your heart and life.
