As per usual, I include the sermon itself, then after that you'll find a whole bunch of scribble notes I also made whilst preparing it, so you can see where my brain was going at the time. This sermon took a number of rewrites to get right. It was mostly rethinkings about the focus of God's priorities, and what was right and not right to say about them. This turned out to be a much more focused precision point than I first thought.
Update: I did a bit more thinking about my sermon, and I have posted the updated version below, along with the sermon outline that gets handed out to people in church. The main changes are swapping around the second and third point (so now it goes God's priorities, we ignore them, we misunderstand them). I tried to disentangle these points from the illustrations and applications a bit - one of the difficulties of this sermon is the applications and illustrations apply to both points, and that could create confusion. I also removed a hypothetical illustration, both for time purposes and because I don't think hypothetical illustrations are as powerful or helpful as the real deal. I've left the original further below, but the updated one is directly below.
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Today I will be talking about priorities - our priorities and God's priorities. Let's start with a prayer, that God might help us focus: Heavenly Father, guide our minds and our hearts, so that we aren't off track, but prioritise you today. Amen. You may need your Bibles open for this talk, and there's a sermon outline in the handout. If you do have the handout, please draw a little arrow to swap the last two points.
Once when I used to work in a petrol station, I was training a new employee on the midnight shift. Some time in the middle of the night, a large, scary looking man came in - with a big beard, shaved head, tattoos all up his arms - and started microwaving chicken sandwiches, eating one while loading the rest into a plastic bag. Then, bold as brass, he went to walk out the door without paying for them. Before he could, I pressed a button under the counter that locked the front door, so he couldn't leave. And then he went mental. He yelled and screamed and told me to let him out, because he was already on CCTV and the cops could just catch him later. I calmly approached him (calm on the outside, I was so afraid!) and told him that he could keep the sandwich he was eating, as we obviously couldn't sell that, but he needed to give me other microwave chicken sandwiches, because they didn't belong to him. He looked at me as if I was crazier than him, and then after a moment gave me the bag full of sandwiches. I let him out, and he left the store.
Shortly after this, my new trainee asked me, "Is that what we're expected to do?" The answer, of course, is no! A petrol station attendant is not expected to put their life at risk for the sake of a microwave chicken sandwich. Or anything else, for that matter. At the time, I thought I was doing the right thing, but in reality I had made a stupid mistake. I had made some chicken sandwiches more important than my own safety. I had the wrong priorities, and I didn't even realise until a trainee pointed it out to me!
Right from the beginning of the series we heard that John didn't record everything Jesus did, but rather had a very clear purpose in recording certain acts of Jesus - 20:31 "these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name." This act of Jesus that John records in chapter 5:1-15 is all about showing us that Jesus follows God's priorities. As Christians, we have to make sure that our priorities match up with God's priorities. We can all have the wrong priorities - if we misunderstand God's priorities, or go so far as to even ignore them.
We can see God's priorities by looking at Jesus. Jesus learns of a man who has been crippled for 38 years and, because he cares about his physical wellbeing, Jesus heals him. Being healed allowed the man to go back to the temple - crippled people were barred otherwise. It's no accident that the next time Jesus meets this man, it is in the temple. So not only does Jesus heal him, but he restores his relationship with God's people. When he meets the man again, Jesus tells him that the consequences of sin are even worse than a lifetime of crippling disability, so he must deal with his sin problem, and so expresses concern for his eternal spiritual welfare. Jesus's priorities are for this man's wellbeing: physical and relational and spiritual. Jesus looks for the person who is really in need - the person who is really broken - and helps them.
Jesus is showing God's priorities. God loves people and wants to fix their problems. God promises us he will take away all sickness, suffering and pain. God promises to bring people into relationship with himself and with each other as a community. God really cares for people who are really broken, who really need him. That alone is enough for us to see that Jesus is the Son of God and believe in him. But that is true for any healing that Jesus performed. As always, when we look at the gospel of John, there is more to it. And we see it when we realise that Jesus is willing to face persecution and death at the hands of his enemies to demonstrate and pursue God's priorities.
Now you might think, Why would anyone want to persecute someone whose priorities are caring for a broken person's physical, relational and spiritual wellbeing? And yet they do. We read about it in the verse just after our reading: "So because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him." This act of Jesus involves more than just Jesus and the crippled man. So let's look at the other people in our story: the Jewish leaders.
In the passage today, the wrong priorities are perfectly illustrated by the questions the Jewish leaders ask the ex-crippled man. If I wanted to be generous to them, I would say that they were trying to help everyone live a life of holiness to attract God's salvation. If I wanted to be harsh on them, I would say they were using God's laws to make life more comfortable for themselves. As we read the gospels, the truth seems to fall somewhere in the middle. The Jewish leaders at the time thought that if people kept God's laws, maybe God would drive out their Roman dictators and set them free. But they also wanted to wield political power over others to benefit themselves. In this way they misunderstood God's priorities of how people come to God, and they ignored God's priorities by focusing on their own comfort. Both are wrong, and these are traps we can just as easily fall into.
The first thing they say is, “It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.” That's not actually true. What the Jewish leaders did was establish a set of rules that boxed in God's own laws - laws to stop people from breaking laws. By boxing in God's laws with other laws, they sought to stop people from sinning so as to attract God's salvation. But when the Jewish leaders made up rules like "Don't carry your mat on the Sabbath," they then enforced them by excluding people from coming to the Temple. That made them powerful! It made them important people, and they liked it.
The man gives his answer, which is essentially "Some guy healed me, and he told me to carry my mat, so I did."
Now what did the Jewish leaders ask? "Who told you to pick it up and walk?" Not "Who healed you, who made you well, who is performing such a remarkable miracle?" But, "Who told you to pick it up, who told you to break our laws? Who is challenging our authority?" Again, the Jewish leaders had the wrong priorities. Their priority is finding out who is telling people to break their rules (stopping them from being saved); and who is challenging their authority (and their power and importance they love so much).
The Jewish leaders had made up laws, and they wanted people to follow those laws. And just like the Jewish leaders, as a Christian community we can sometimes make up laws to box in people's relationship with God. We use these rules to draw a line between what's right and what's wrong, so we can point to (usually someone else's) actions and say, "That's wrong." We draw these lines for lots of reasons, but ultimately it usually comes down to the same two reasons the Jewish leaders had: we think laws will bring people to God; and we want power over others because our rules make us comfortable.
And both reasons are based on wrong priorities. We are mistaken about God's priorities, and we just plain ignore them. As I said, both of these things can exist together. Let's start with when we ignore God's priorities. This is sin itself. There's no positive intent in this. It is all about making ourselves more comfortable.
Making up rules is a way of making clear lines between good and bad. And that makes us comfortable, because it means not only do we now know what's right and wrong, but we also get to say what's right and wrong. You can usually tell when we are doing this for our own comfort, because we draw lines that make actions we would never take really black and white, while we make sins we might commit rather more grey.
Look at how the western Church treats greed - an actual sin, not something we made up. On Tuesday I was sitting next to a Christian woman at the doctor. She goes to church, runs a bible study in her home, and loves God. She was complaining that her $2000 gold watch was running slow. The western church is very good at thinking that someone who spends $2000 on a watch isn't greedy. We can't judge them for wasting money on an utter extravagance when there are people in their church who live on less than that a month and struggle to pay their rent. We're good at being non-judgmental when it comes to greed. We're very cautious. We consider that we don't know the whole story. We don't know how much the person gives to church and Christian causes. We don't know what their own conscience is like. We don't know the background or the circumstances. We are very, very careful.
But how do we treat people who smoke cigarettes? Who wear clothes that show too much skin? Who gamble? Who vote for the Greens? It's so easy to point at them and say, "That's wrong!" But these aren't God's rules; they're our rules. And our rules are to do with our comfort zones. You can probably think of other examples of things we rail against because they make us uncomfortable. Someone goes and watches an MA15+ rated movie full of swearing and violence like Deadpool, and we can furrow our brows and tut our fingers. Someone takes a holiday and flies business class, and we say, "Ooh, that must have been nice."
Don't get me wrong. Rich does not equal greedy, and I'm not calling on us to be more judgmental of people because of their wealth or their greed. I'm saying we need to be less judgmental of people whose actions and activities we are uncomfortable with. We know how to do it with greed - we need to learn how to do it with everything, and especially things that aren't God's rules, but rather middle class cultural rules.
Tony Campolo, spiritual advisor to US President Bill Clinton, once said to a big Christian conference: "1) Last night 30,000 kids died of starvation or diseases stemming from malnutrition. 2) None of you give a <swear word>. 3) You all care more about the fact that I just said <swear word> than the fact that I just said 30,000 kids died." I don't have the guts to read out that quote exactly, because I know the moment I swear in church, there are people who will be so distracted by it they won't hear anything else I have to say. But if we care more about swear words than about kids dying, we plainly have the wrong priorities!
Now sometimes there's more to it. Sometimes someone's sin hurts us, or someone we love. It seems unfair to talk about that as if it is mere discomfort. Sometimes the pain of sin is not just the loss of a comfy chair; it's torture and betrayal and loss. And so, in pain, we lash out. I understand that, and so does God. But that doesn't make it right. Even in the midst of pain, we must still pursue God's priorities. Torture and betrayal and loss are what Jesus experienced on the cross because of other people's sin. And he sought to fulfill God's priorities in looking after broken people on that cross! Keeping Jesus free from suffering was not God's priority. Jesus died precisely for those who caused him pain. And we are called to love others - not because they're lovely, but because we love God, and that's his priority.
Now let's move on to mistaking God's priorities by thinking we are bringing people closer to God.
I want to make it clear, it's not wrong to tell people how to live holy lives. I have no problem with telling people that something is against God's will - I do it every time I preach. And there is nothing wrong with telling someone that their sin is an obstacle between them getting to God. Of course it is! We can never get to God on our own - that's the gospel! The mistake comes when we start telling people that their sin is an obstacle between God getting to them. That is wrong! Nothing is an obstacle between God getting to them! God overcomes sin! God does away with sin! God destroys sin! That's why Jesus came - to save the lost! To quote Jesus from another gospel, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners." Sinners are the ones Jesus came for!
I think we tell ourselves we're good at recognising this gospel truth. We say we understand God's grace. We think we wouldn't make a mistake like that. Of course someone's good works don't lead to their salvation. But then we see someone in our church commit a certain kind of sin, and it's like we lose our minds. "They call themselves a Christian? They shouldn't be sinning! They must be backsliding! They mustn't really be saved!" But that's the mistake! Christians are sinners. If we're not, why do we do a confession at church every week? Why confess if we don't have any sins to confess? If you say those words every week, and you mean them, but then you judge another Christian because they have sinned, you're a hypocrite. And if I then judge you for being a hypocrite, I'm a hypocrite. My point is not to judge people who are judgmental, but rather to point out that we're all sinners! Living more holy lives is a great way to love God. But it's a terrible way to solve our sin problem. We can only rely on God in Christ Jesus for that.
God's priority in caring for people's physical, relational and spiritual wellbeing is not reliant on our ability to live holy lives, so we don't need to worry about regulating other people's lives to make sure they are holy enough for God. If we prioritise their knowing and loving God and his care for them - God's priority - a transformed life will follow.
If we start complaining that sinners are coming to church, we're very close to the Jewish leaders complaining that Jesus heals cripples on the Sabbath, and we are outside God's priorities. And if we start judging people because they're breaking our rules, we're doing so because they are challenging an authority we don't have, and we're outside God's priorities. God makes the rules, not us. Jesus showed us he is God's son that by healing on the sabbath. We should be following God's priorities of loving broken people, meeting their physical, relational and spiritual needs, and giving them every opportunity to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, so that by believing they may have life in his name.
What are God’s Priorities?
1.
1. God’s priorities are shown in Jesus
Jesus cares for physical wellbeing
“At once the man was cured” (5:9)
Jesus cares for relational wellbeing
“Later Jesus found him at the temple” (5:14)
Jesus cares for spiritual wellbeing
“Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you” (5:14)
1.
1. Our priorities are either God’s or wrong
The Pharisees had the wrong priorities
“[B]ecause Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him” (5:16)
We can ignore God’s priorities
“It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat” (5:10)
We can misunderstand God’s priorities
“Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?” (5:12)
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This morning, I will be talking about priorities - our priorities and God's priorities. Let's start with a prayer, that God might help us focus: Heavenly Father, guide our minds and our hearts, so that we aren't off track, but prioritise you today. Amen.
Once when I used to work in a petrol station, I was training a new employee on the midnight shift. Some time in the middle of the night, a large, scary looking man came in - with a big beard, shaved head, tattoos all up his arms - and started microwaving chicken sandwiches, eating one while loading the rest into a plastic bag. Then, bold as brass, he went to walk out the door without paying for them. Before he did, I pressed a button under the counter that locked the front door, so he couldn't leave. And then he went mental. He yelled and screamed and told me to let him out, because he was already on CCTV and the cops could just catch him later. I calmly approached him (calm on the outside, I was so afraid!) and told him that he could keep the sandwich he was eating, because we obviously couldn't sell that, but he needed to give me other microwave chicken sandwiches, because they didn't belong to him. He looked at me as if I was stupid, and then after a moment gave me the bag full of sandwiches. I let him out, and he left the store.
Shortly after this, my new trainee asked me, "Is that what we're expected to do?" The answer, of course, is no! A petrol station attendant is not expected to put their life at risk for the sake of a microwave chicken sandwich. Or anything else, for that matter. At the time, I thought I was doing the right thing, but in reality I had made a stupid mistake. I was trying to prevent the chicken sandwiches from being stolen at the expense of my own safety. I had the wrong priorities, and I didn't even realise until a trainee pointed it out to me!
It is possible for us to have the wrong priorities - to misunderstand God's priorities, or sometimes to even ignore them. As Christians, we have to make sure that our priorities match up with God's priorities. Right from the beginning of the series we heard that John didn't record everything Jesus did, but rather had a very clear purpose in recording certain acts of Jesus - 20:31 "these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name." This act of Jesus that John records in chapter 5:1-15 is all about showing us God's priorities.
We see God's priorities by looking at Jesus. Jesus learns of a man who has been crippled for 38 years and because he cares about his physical wellbeing, Jesus heals him. Being healed allowed the man to go back to the temple - crippled people were barred otherwise. It's no accident that the next time Jesus meets this man, it is in the temple. So not only does Jesus heal him, but he restores his relationship with God's people. When he meets the man again, Jesus expresses concern for his spiritual welfare, and tells him that the consequences of sin are even worse than a lifetime of crippling disability, so he should deal with his sin problem. Jesus's priorities are for this man's wellbeing: physical and relational and spiritual. Jesus looks for the person who is really in need - the person who is really broken - and helps them.
Jesus is showing God's priorities. God loves people and wants to fix their problems. God promises us he will take away all sickness, suffering and pain. God promises to bring people into relationship with himself and with each other as a community. God really cares for people who are really broken, who really need him. That alone is enough for us to see that Jesus is the Son of God, and believe in him. But that is true for any healing that Jesus performed. As always when we look at the gospel of John, there is more to it. And we see it when we realise that Jesus is willing to face persecution and death at the hands of his enemies to demonstrate and pursue God's priorities.
Now you might think, Why would anyone want to persecute someone whose priorities are caring for a broken person's physical, relational and spiritual wellbeing? And yet they do. We read about it in the verse just after our reading: "So because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him." This act of Jesus involves more than just Jesus and the crippled man. Let's look at the other people in our story: the Jewish leaders.
What were the priorities of the Jewish leaders? The first thing they say is, “It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.” That's not actually true. What the Jewish leaders did was establish a set of rules that boxed in God's own laws - laws to stop people from breaking laws. If I wanted to be generous to them, I would say that their priority was to try and help everyone live a life of holiness to attract God's blessing. If I wanted to be harsh on them, I would say that their priority was to use God's laws as a way of making life more comfortable for themselves. As we read the gospels, the truth seems to fall somewhere in the middle, and both are wrong. The Jewish leaders at the time thought that if people kept God's laws, maybe God would drive out their Roman dictators and set them free. In this way they misunderstood God's priorities. But they also wanted to wield political power over others to benefit themselves. That is, they ignored God's priorities. And these are mistakes we can just as easily make.
In the passage today, these wrong priorities are perfectly illustrated by the questions they ask the ex-crippled man. When they first see him carrying his mat on the Sabbath, they approach him and ask him why he is breaking the law they had made, which they wrongly call God's law. And the man gives his answer, "A man healed me, and he told me to carry my mat, so I did."
Now just stop there for a moment. Imagine you see someone walking down the street carrying their wheelchair over their head. People may be freaking out a bit because, you know, they don't want this guy to drop a wheelchair on their head. And so someone, maybe you, comes up to him and says, "Hey mate, why are you brandishing that wheelchair about?" And he responds, "I broke my back 38 years ago and I've been stuck in this wheelchair ever since, but then someone came along and healed me instantly, and he told me to carry it home, so I am!" What would your initial reaction be? What would you first ask this person? What's the obvious question in that situation?
WHO HEALED YOU? Right? Well, as it turns out, that is only an obvious question if your priorities are caring for people, or you have even a bit of interest in other people or in amazing miracles. But what did the Jewish leaders ask? "Who told you to pick it up and walk?" This tells us about the priorities of the Jewish leaders: this guy's healing is not important to them. They don't ask him about his healing. They may accept that he was healed miraculously. It's not important to them, because their priority is finding out who is telling people to break their rules - who is challenging their authority.
The Jewish leaders wanted people to follow the laws they had made. And just like the Jewish leaders, we can make up laws to box in people's relationship with God. We feel like we need to be able to draw a line between what's right and what's wrong, so we can point to someone else's actions and say, "That's wrong." We draw these lines for lots of reasons, but ultimately it always comes down to the same two reasons the Jewish leaders had: we think our laws will bring God's blessings, and we want power over others because our rules make us comfortable.
And in both cases, we are wrong. We are mistaken about God's priorities, or we just plain ignore them. Let's start with the mistake. Why is it a mistake to want people to live holy lives? Why is it wrong to tell people what's good for them? The answer is: it's not wrong. I have no problem with telling people that something is against God's will. There is nothing wrong with telling someone that their sin is an obstacle between them getting to God. Of course it is! We can never get to God on our own! The mistake comes when we start telling people that their sin is an obstacle between God getting to them. Because nothing is an obstacle between God getting to them! God overcomes sin! God does away with sin! God destroys sin! That's why Jesus came - to save the lost! To quote Jesus from another gospel, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners." Sinners are the ones Jesus came for!
I think we tell ourselves we're good at recognising that truth. We understand God's grace. We wouldn't make a mistake like that. Of course someone's good works don't lead to their salvation. And then we see someone in our church sin, and we lose our minds. "They call themselves a Christian! They shouldn't be sinning! They must be backsliding! They mustn't really be saved!" But that's a mistake. Christians are sinners. If we're not, why do we do a confession at church every week? Why confess if we don't have any sins to confess? If you say those words every week, and you mean them, and then you judge another Christian because they have sinned, you're a hypocrite. Of course, if I then judge you for being a hypocrite, I'm a hypocrite. My point is, we're all sinners, and while living more holy lives is a great way to love God, it's a terrible way to solve our sin problem. Much better that we rely on God in Christ Jesus for that. We must ensure we have this right in our minds.
So that's when we make a mistake about God's priorities. What about when we ignore God's priorities? This is sin itself. There's no positive intent in this. It is all about making ourselves more comfortable. What does this look like? For the Jewish leaders, it involved making up rules like "Don't carry your mat on the Sabbath," and then enforcing them. Because they made the laws, if you wanted to know how to please God, you had to ask them what the laws were, and they enforced them when they were broken. They could exclude people from coming to the Temple by saying they were unclean. They were preachers, and police and judges all in one. That's what made them powerful! It meant they could walk around in flowing robes and be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and have the most important seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets. It made them important people.
That is what is fundamentally comfortable about making up our own rules. It's a way of making clear lines between good and bad. And that makes us comfortable, because it means we get to say what's right and wrong. You can usually tell when we are doing this for our own comfort, because usually we draw lines that make actions we would never take really black and white, while we make sins we might get involved in rather more grey.
Look at how the western Church treats greed. On Tuesday I was sitting next to a Christian woman (who goes to church, runs a bible study in her home, and loves God) complaining that her $2000 gold watch was running slow. We're very good at thinking that someone who spends $2000 on a watch isn't greedy. We can't judge them for wasting money on an utter extravagance when there are people in their church who live on less than that a month and struggle to pay their rent. We're good at being non-judgmental when it comes to money. We're very cautious. We consider that we don't know the whole story. We don't know how much the person gives to church and Christian causes. We don't know what their own conscience is like. We are very careful.
But how do we look at people who smoke cigarettes? Who wear clothes that show too much skin? Who vote for the Greens? It's so easy to point at them and say, "Sinner!" But these aren't God's priorities; they're our rules. Someone goes and watches an MA15+ rated movie full of swearing and violence like Deadpool, and we can furrow our brows and tut our fingers. Someone takes a holiday and flies business class, and we say, "Ooh, that must have been nice."
Don't get me wrong. Rich does not equal greedy, and I'm not calling on us to be more judgmental of people because of their wealth. I'm saying we need to be less judgmental of people whose actions and activities we are uncomfortable with. And I know sometimes someone's sin hurts us, or someone we love, and we just sort of lose it. I understand it, I really do. And it seems unfair to talk about that as if it is mere discomfort. Sometimes sin is not just the loss of a comfy chair; it's torture and betrayal and pain. Just like the torture and betrayal and pain that saw Jesus on a cross. But keeping Jesus free from suffering was not God's priority. And keeping us free from suffering is not God's priority either. Broken people's physical, relational and spiritual wellbeing is God's priority. And that makes it our priority too.
Tony Campolo, spiritual advisor to US President Bill Clinton, once said to a big Christian conference: "1) Last night 30,000 kids died of starvation or diseases stemming from malnutrition. 2) None of you give a <swear word>. 3) You all care more about the fact that I just said <swear word> than the fact that I just said 30,000 kids died." I don't have the guts to read out that quote exactly, because I know the moment I swear in church, there are people who will be so distracted by it they won't hear anything else I have to say. But if we care more about swear words than about kids dying, we plainly have the wrong priorities!
If we start complaining that sinners are coming to church, we're very close to the Jewish leaders complaining that Jesus heals cripples on the Sabbath, and we are outside God's priorities. And if we start judging people because they're breaking our rules, we're no better than those who crucified God's son Jesus Christ. We should be following God's priorities of loving broken people, meeting their physical, relational and spiritual needs, and giving them every opportunity to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, so that by believing they may have life in his name.
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Sermon notes
Healing on the sabbath
Healing of a crippled man (38 years!), otherwise marginalised from society
Jewish leaders don't care about healing, only about rules (sabbath - lies)
Big idea: Jesus highlights God's priorities
Big question: What are our priorities?
How do you feel about people who break the law?
What if they have an excuse?
What if they have done their time?
What if they have changed?
You may not know, but our church turns some people away. They are not welcome.
Jesus accepts those even his people reject. Those on the margins. 38 years - a lifetime of sickness!
Jesus tells this guy to carry his mat. It breaks the Jewish leaders laws (not God's laws)
We focus on who is carrying their mat - Jesus focuses on healing someone's sickness
We focus on what what sounds unfair or impossible - Jesus focuses on our eternal future
It is fine to be concerned about safety - but it is not our top priority
* Our priorities can be wrong
* God's priorities revealed in Jesus
* Jewish Leaders have different priorities
- want to protect people
- want to control people
* God's priorities are right, ours are wrong
- Churches can have wrong priorities
- Individuals can have wrong priorities
* How do we realign our priorities?
We like rules - but they're not our job
We have to separate between God's priorities and ours, because we sometimes get them mixed up
Prevention
is great. Prevention is not better than cure when it comes to sin -
it's impossible to prevent sin. God calls people through curing sin.
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Jesus seeks out and welcomes the broken people
How do we treat broken people
1) Jesus is showing that he is God by healing on the Sabbath
2) Humanity would rather have God's laws than God
3)
The
act of Jesus we're looking at today involves Jesus healing a crippled
man next to a pool. But the healing is just one part of the picture,
and I want to make sure that today we understand why John included this
act of healing when he has left out so many others. As we were told a
few weeks ago, it's not just a miracle, it's a sign - it points to
something.
Here at Waitara Anglican, we're working through the early chapters of the gospel of John.
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Let me give you a simple example. There's a movie out at the moment called Deadpool. You don't need to know much about it - it's about a comic book character, and the whole point of the movie is violence and profanity. Now it's really easy if you're not a fan of comic books to just say, "It's violent and profane, don't see it." You're not going to see it, so drawing the line there is nice comfortably distant for you. But I'm a nerd, and I like the comic book movie genre. I'd love to go see this movie, and if I did, I think I'd laugh and enjoy myself. I won't see it, because I don't think I should. But I don't judge fellow Christians who have seen it, or are going to see it. And I definitely don't judge non-Christians who go see it, because that's not my role.
And if that's our biggest problem, then thank God! Because he's dealt with our sin. That's his priority - praise Jesus.
And yet it's so easy when you're on this side of salvation to cry out to the world, "Don't get drunk! Don't watch bad movies! Don't carry your mat!" because we're already saved. That's probably more what we need to hear. But non-Christians don't care what God wants, and have no reason to change how they live. They don't need to hear "Change your life!" They need to hear, "Jesus will change your life!" And I'm not saying that God doesn't convict people of sin. Of course he does. But
That is the
I'm not saying we can't ever tell when someone is doing the wrong thing. Our society has specific people in positions of judgment - like judges in courts, and politicians who make laws. Those are very specific roles - and while they are blessed by God, they are still human institutions that are prone to human errors. And loving broken people sometimes means protecting them from their own brokenness, or protecting them from other people's brokenness. But we can't insert ourselves into another person's free will relationship with God. God changes hearts and minds. We simply love people along the way. That's God's priorities. And it has to be this way, because human lives are complex. The choices aren't always black and white. Sometimes we don't even know what's going on in our own lives, how can we judge someone else's? Now I know that love and judgment can be done together. I know that, because God does both. But he doesn't call us to do both. He calls us to love, and he says he will judge. We need to listen to God, and keep his priorities.
Let me give you a simple, non-confrontational example. There's a movie out at the moment called Deadpool. You don't need to know much about it - it's about a comic book character, and the whole point of the movie is violence and profanity. I'm a nerd, and I like the comic book movie genre. I'd love to go see this movie, and if I did, I think I'd laugh and enjoy myself. I won't see it, because I don't think I should. But I don't judge fellow Christians who have seen it, or are going to see it. And I definitely don't judge non-Christians who go see it. That's not my role.
Let me give you a confrontational example. Look at how we treat greed. We're very good at saying that someone who spends $500 on a bottle of wine isn't greedy, isn't wasting money on an utter extravagance when there are people in their church who live on less than that a week and is struggling to pay their rent; or the person who borrows to the hilt to buy a house in the local area so they can be close to church but now have to work more hours and cut their giving. We're good at being non-judgmental when it comes to money. We're very cautious. We consider that we don't know the whole story. We don't know how much the person gives to church and Christian causes. We don't know what their own conscience is like. We are very careful.
Now look at how the church in the western world treats any sexual sin. We lose our collective minds.
Don't get me wrong here. I'm not calling on us to be more judgmental of people because of their wealth. I'm saying we need to be less judgmental of people for those other sins we struggle with.
Even as churches we can have the wrong priorities. Tony Campolo, spiritual advisor to US President Bill Clinton, once said to a big Christian conference: "1) Last night 30,000 kids died of starvation or diseases stemming from malnutrition. 2) None of you give a <swear word>. 3) You all care more about the fact that I just said <swear word> than the fact that I just said 30,000 kids died."
I don't have the guts to read out that quote exactly, because I know the moment I swear in church, there are people who will be so distracted by it they won't hear anything else I have to say. But if we care more about swear words than about kids dying, we plainly have the wrong priorities!
And as individual Christians we can have the wrong priorities too. Take me, for example. I love justice. I love it so much I'd throw my life away to protect a stolen chicken sandwich. Justice is a good thing! But if I go out and become a vigilante, that's not God's priority. He doesn't want me out there judging people. He tells me that quite clearly. Justice is good, but judgment is not my job. God's priority for me is love. I can have all the good intentions in the world, and still not be following God's priorities. I might have good priorities, but I need to have God's priorities.
This was the reason Jesus did this healing sign on the Sabbath, and it's the reason John has recorded this act in his gospel: to show us that the only priorities we should have are God's priorities, and to show us God's priorities: care for broken people, look after their physical, spiritual and relational wellbeing, so they come closer to God and closer to his people.
Now, it shouldn't surprise us that non-Christians don't have God's priorities. But why is it that we as Christians still have these hard choices to make, if we have accepted God's priorities? I want to suggest three things that confuse our priorities, so that we can recognise them, change them in our minds, and re-align with God's priorities for people's physical and spiritual and relational wellbeing. Firstly, we're all sinful. Secondly, we feel responsible for other people's decisions. And thirdly, we misunderstand wisdom.
First things first, we're all sinful. We all go off the rails. Sometimes our priorities get skewed because we're selfish - we don't want to follow God, so we do something else. Sometimes we think we're doing the right thing and have good intentions, but have bad practices based on wrong priorities - me with the chicken sandwich. Sometimes we've had something painful done against us, and we react to protect ourselves - someone hurts us, so we hurt them back. It's all sin. If you're a Christian, then you've accepted that you are a broken, sinful person. Just like that crippled man, we are the broken people that Jesus came to seek out and save!
My friends, how great is it that this is our biggest problem - because it is already solved! We can't do anything about being sinful, and we don't need to - because Jesus has done everything for us! God knows we're sinful. He knows we'll react badly. He knows we will have wrong priorities sometimes. And I'm not saying that so you can do whatever you want. I'm saying don't sweat it. Accept that it's going to happen. Repent when it does, and know that you are forgiven. Then move on, learning the lesson of your failure, and change your priorities to match God's.
Secondly, we worry about other people's decisions. This is sin! We can't change people's minds. That's God's job. But
Thirdly, I feel I need to say something about wisdom. I could not count the number of times I have heard a Christian say, "But we must exercise wisdom." We must be good stewards of our money. We must not let anyone get hurt. We must make sure we aren't putting ourselves in compromising situations. We must be seen to be doing the right thing.
That's not wisdom. That's risk assessment. That's duty of care. That's public relations. It's not wisdom. It's what we might call "world wisdom". This is what Paul says about world wisdom: "
You know what wisdom is? "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom," so says Proverbs and so says Psalms.
* We are still sinful
* We worry about other people's decisions
* We misuse wisdom
One is because we are concerned about the consequences of our actions. And that's fair enough. After all, our priorities might lead us to unforeseen consequences. My chicken sandwich bravery could have led to my death or injury. The government's priority of stopping people smuggling leads to children suffering. A parent's priority of strict discipline for children might lead to those children going off the rails. The Jewish leaders' priority of stopping people breaking the Sabbath led them to persecute God's son and put him to death on a cross.
The thing is, changing our priorities to God's priorities doesn't stop bad things from happening as a consequence. Jesus is the ultimate example: he followed God's priorities perfectly, and was persecuted and put to death by the Jewish leaders. The problem isn't that negative consequences happen. The problem is we think that's somehow our responsibility. And it isn't. It just isn't. God doesn't leave it up to us. God's priorities aren't about our results. We don't have heavenly key performance indicators. What God cares about is that we have put him first. That's all. The consequences are all in his hands. It's a question of us having enough faith to trust that God will do his will through us keeping his priorities, even if that means consequences that we might not like.
If they make a bad decision and get hurt, then I'll love them and help them. And I'll do it seventy times seven times. "If you see any brother or sister commit a sin that does not lead to death, you should pray and God will give them life." 1 John 5:16. Because that's God's priorities for Christians.
Life is full of decisions we need to make, opinions we need to have, and positions we need to hold. And a lot of them compete. They clash. And we struggle to tell which ones should come out on top, because sometimes there are multiple good positions and we don't know which one should be given priority. It's hard, and we get it wrong.
Our focus often highlights our priorities, both as Christians individually and together as a Christian community.
Our priorities tell us something about ourselves. For instance, you might think that my chicken sandwich story tells you that I believe that God will keep me safe in the face of danger; or that I am a very loyal employee; or maybe that I was showing off in front of the new trainee and I'm vain. Well, I can tell you why I went toe to toe with that monster of a man over a chicken sandwich: because I didn't think it was fair that he got a sandwich for free. I felt it was unjust, and so I stood up to him. And justice is a great priority to have, right? God loves justice, right? Yes, he does. But there are already structures in place to take care of that petrol station's precious chicken sandwich. My brave stupidity saved the company $6. That company's shareholders made $5.9 billion dollars last year. Their CEO alone gets paid $15 million a year. I might have died, but I saved them $6.
