Jesus Loves the Broken - Part A

People can get broken. Jesus loves broken people.

Now why is this important? This is important because as Gordon McDonald once wrote, a single human being is the most beautiful, the most valuable, and potentially the most powerful thing God ever created. So if they get broken, that can impede God's purpose and plan for that person's life. We've all experienced a broken heart to some degree, but if you look anywhere other than to God, you will likely stay in that state of brokenness. Today on Connect with Skip Heiting, Skip helps you see that God can heal your wounds. But before we begin, we want to let you know about a resource that gives you practical insight on how to love others like Jesus. People everywhere have a deep God-given need to be loved. But sadly, sometimes the people who need love the most are the most rejected.

Here's Skip Heitzig. We all crave love. We will do sometimes almost anything to get it, to know that we are loved by somebody else unconditionally. No one did that better than Jesus. He loved the worst of sinners. He loved the best of saints. Jesus showed the love of God in human flesh. We want to give you a glimpse of God's relentless love for all people, including you, by sending you the Jesus Loves People four-booklet collection by Skip Heitzig. All four Jesus Loves People titles, including Jesus Loves the Broken, are our thanks for your gift of $25 or more today to help connect more people to God's love through His Word.

Visit connectwithskip.com slash offer to give online securely or call 800-922-1888. Now, we're in John Chapter 5 as Skip Heitzig gets into today's message. I brought with me today a camera. You can tell by looking at it, those who can see it, it's a very old one. They don't make these things anymore. This is called an Argus C3 camera. It was a very inexpensive, mass-produced rangefinder camera made out of Bakelite, so that we'll date it, manufactured from between 1939 and 1966. And this camera is broken. It doesn't work anymore, but it's special to me, and I have it because this was my father's camera.

And so all of the early photographs that he took of my mother and their honeymoon and the family were all done on this little camera until it broke. And it broke just because it was used and worn out, and he had pushed that button one too many times. And people can get like this. People can get worn out and used up, and there's enough people that will push their buttons one too many times.

They get broken. If you're a member of the human race, you know what it's like to be broken to some degree, maybe a broken heart. Maybe somebody in a relationship broke your heart. A few years back, a Nashville newspaper decided to do a special set of articles on people that were suffering from a broken heart. And so they asked pastors in the area to submit names in the local community of those that they knew had a broken heart. The newspaper would find them and interview them and write their story.

One insightful pastor sent to the newspaper the telephone directory for Nashville. In other words, who doesn't have a broken heart to some degree? But then there are those who, more than just being hurt or having a broken heart, because of life circumstances, we would say that person is a broken person. Malcolm Muggeridge once wrote, The biggest disease today is the feeling of being unwanted, uncared for, deserted by everybody. The greatest evil is the lack of love and charity, the terrible indifference towards one neighbor who lives at the roadside assaulted by exploitation, corruption, poverty, and disease. Today, our study is Jesus loves the broken.

And that's because He does. And we know that He does because He announced that one of the reasons He came to this earth was to heal the broken hearted. He has sent me, Jesus said in the synagogue at Nazareth, He has sent me to heal the broken hearted. The word broken hearted is an interesting word because it literally speaks of rubbing against something. And it was a word used for kindling a fire where you would take two sticks and rub them together so fiercely that you would ignite a flame. So the word came to mean a person crushed or broken to pieces. And that's because life rubs so hard sometimes against some people's lives that the end result is they are broken hearted.

They are crushed by those things. Well, how do you love a broken person? How did Jesus love a broken person?

Is it important to love those who are broken? My father had many sayings that he would quote and there were dinner times where I would just roll my eyes and go, here goes. And dads do that and they have the right to do that. But I remember my dad, one of his favorite sayings was that God helps those who help themselves. And he would even say, you know the Bible says God helps those who help themselves. Now I've never read that in the Bible. In fact, I did a little digging and found that it was Benjamin Franklin who was credited with saying that and he is quoted in the 1757 edition of poor Richard's almanac.

So that's where that comes from. What we discover in our study today in the fifth chapter of John is God doesn't help those who help themselves. He helps those who can't help themselves. Here is a man who is unable to do something for himself until Jesus comes along and heals this man.

And there's two overarching truths in John chapter 5 there on your worship diagram today. People can get broken and Jesus loves broken people. People can get broken, Jesus loves broken people. Now why is this important? This is important because as Gordon McDonald once wrote, a single human being is the most beautiful, the most valuable and potentially the most powerful thing God ever created. So if they get broken, that can impede God's purpose and plan for that person's life. People can get broken.

Let's see how. In John 5 beginning in the first verse, 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, that is in these porches, lay a great multitude of sick people, blind, lame, paralyzed, waiting for the moving of the water. For an angel went down at a certain time into the pool and stirred up the water. Then whoever stepped in first after the stirring of the water was made well of whatever disease he had. Now a certain man was there who had an infirmity 38 years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already 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. Now all of us are aware that no matter where we go in this world, you're going to find broken people. Whether you go to Syria or Syracuse, whether you find yourself in Afghanistan or Albuquerque, whether you're in Iraq or Indianapolis, whether you're in Paris, France or Paris, Texas, you're going to find people who have been broken. Broken people. And a person can be broken in a number of ways. They can be broken spiritually. Most all people are. You can be broken emotionally.

Many people to some degree are. You can be broken physically. And you can get broken by experiences that happen to you in life, by how other people mistreat you in life, or by making wrong choices yourself over time. As one author said, life will break you.

Nobody can protect you from that and living alone won't either, for solitude will break you with its yearning. So no matter where you go in this life, there is the possibility of being broken. A marriage that didn't work out. And then another marriage that didn't work out. Or being abused and abandoned by parents or being abused and abandoned by children.

A disease, an accident that renders one limited in their physical capacities. You can be betrayed by someone. Hurtful words can be spread by people who talk against you and about you. Proverbs 18 asks the question, the spirit of a man will sustain him in sickness, but who can bear a broken spirit?

And the thing about brokenness is you can't always see it by looking at a person. The world was shocked last year when we heard that Robin Williams had taken his life. This talented actor, who whenever he was interviewed was so full of humor, so funny. But there was a dark side to his life. Broken marriages, he struggled with depression for years.

Some believe he was in the early stages of Parkinson's disease, substance abuse in his life. And those of us who didn't know him well had no idea. So here's the deal, right now, in this room, people surrounding you. We don't know what has gone on in their life.

We don't know what they're carrying as they come in. There may be a sense of helplessness that they feel because of it. Well let's look how this man was broken. There's three ways in which I submit to you this was a broken man. First of all, he is broken by his circumstances.

We know he's sick. Verse five says he had an infirmity, though we don't know exactly what that infirmity was. It means a debilitating illness. Whatever it was, he was either paralyzed or he was too weak to be able to move freely because whenever something happened at the pool, he couldn't get in in time.

Everybody else would beat him to the punch. And so he had the circumstance of being physically ill. And I will tell you this, that physical ailments, especially chronic disease, has a way of isolating a person and making them feel so utterly alone. They begin to realize they're unable to do what they used to do. They understand their physical capabilities have been pared way, way down.

And then they find that their friends will invite them less and less to functions because of their physical disabilities and they just feel more and more isolated. Now with this man, we're not told how old he was. He could have been much older than 38 years. We know his disease lingered that long. But he could have been much older and that this was an on-set condition that came later on. Which means, though we don't know, there's the possibility that this man was married or married at one time.

There's no record of his wife. And I say that because so often when there is this circumstance of being broken by physical disease, it puts an enormous amount of pressure on the marriage relationship. 75% of marriages where there is chronic illness end in divorce. 75%. And that is because the spouse, the caregiver, is frightened at the prospect of long-term care.

And 75% of the time will flee the marriage. So circumstances can rub against a person's life and rendering that person crushed, broken. E. Stanley Jones, some of you have heard the name of that great missionary to India, said that he knew of a pastor who prepared a series of 10 sermons, and it was a series called How to Avoid a Nervous Breakdown. Before he had finished the 10th message, he had one. He had one himself, broken by circumstances in his life. Something else I'd like you to notice as you look at your Bibles, in verse 3, this man was broken by people.

Now I want you to see this. In these porches, in this pool of Bethesda, and I'll describe that to you, in Jerusalem, there lay a great multitude of sick people. So here's a place where they just stuck sick people or allowed them to congregate. There's a great multitude of sick people, blind, lame, paralyzed, waiting for the moving of the water. It's important that you know that in ancient cultures they did a lousy job of caring for the sick.

They did not have programs like we have today. If you were sick back then, if you were broken back then, you would either become a beggar in the streets or at the gates, or you'd simply congregate where people knew the sick people were, in this pool of Bethesda. Now the pool of Bethesda, and there is evidence of it still to this day, was about two feet, maybe three feet deep, this large rectangular pool by the sheep gate, because they would bring sheep into the city, and they would clean them up and get them ready for sacrifice. But we're told there was a great multitude of sick people. One commentator suggests that you'd probably find about 300 of them every day in that place, but on festival times like this, great feasts where people would gather to Jerusalem, you would find about 3,000 sick people congregating together. Now it doesn't take a great imagination to envision what this would look like and what this would smell like.

If you've ever visited a third world country hospital, and you have seen sometimes two patients per bed, in a little single bed, they don't even know each other, but they're put in the same bed, and their families are camped around on the floor cooking food for them. What it looks like, sounds like, and smells like. I've experienced it reminds me of what I read here. Now why were they there? Well it speaks about the moving of the water. Evidently there was some subterranean spring that fed this pool that caused the water to bubble up every now and then. And so people thought it was an angel that did that, and that's why it is written, by the way, though it is written in your Bibles this way, in the most ancient manuscripts, it doesn't say the angel stirred up the water. So it is believed that a scribe, in trying to describe to us what people believed in that day, said it was an angel that did it. Either way, people congregated there in hopes of finding healing.

Bethesda is a word that means the house of mercy. It's ironic, because it had become a house of misery, where a great multitude had gathered together. But I'm bringing this to your attention because this is how many broken people feel. They feel, just like they did in ancient times, that our culture doesn't do a very good job in taking care of them. They feel isolated, they feel shelved, sort of like this camera here. This camera ordinarily sits on a shelf at home.

It's to remind me of my past, my father, but that's all it is. It just sort of sits there, broken, on the shelf, for me to walk by and be amused by. And people who are homeless feel like they're on the shelf. People walk by them and are amused by them. AIDS victims often feel they're on the shelf. People walk by and are amused by them. Those in nursing homes feel like they're on the shelf.

People walk by, they're amused by them. There's no real involvement or care. They feel broken by people. This man broken by circumstance, broken by people, and also he was broken by time, verse 5. I just want the length of time to settle into our hearts, a certain man was there who had an infirmity almost four decades, 38 years. The next verse says, Jesus saw him and knew that he had been in that condition a long time. Here's a man on whom time had taken its toll. Not only had he been broken by the circumstance of disease and broken by the relegation of a place by people, but he got up every single day to the same reality so that his helplessness turned into hopelessness. Whatever hope he had of getting better had vanished decades before this. It was just this daily hopeless routine. Sometimes people say, Well, you know, time heals all wounds.

No, it does not. Sometimes the longer the time protracts and elongates, it feels like eternity upon eternity to a person in this condition, and they spiral downward from helplessness to hopelessness. I've appreciated the honesty of Paul the Apostle in 2 Corinthians when he said he had suffered beyond the ability to endure so that we despaired even of life.

It always caught me off guard. It's like, that's Paul, despairing of life. What could have happened to him?

Well, he goes on and his honesty is unveiled in chapter 11 of that book. He says, I have labored and toiled, and I have often gone without sleep. I have known hunger and thirst, and I have often gone without food. I have been cold and naked and besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches. It's that daily pressure day after day, week after week that adds up, it takes its toll and it finds a person crushed.

Like the psalmist said, My tears have been my food day and night. Crushed, rubbed down by circumstances, by people, and by time. And how is brokenness expressed?

Well, a number of different ways. Depression is one. Anger is another. Substance abuse will be true for others. Others will be antisocial in their behavior. Others will be suicidal in their thinking. And others will self-injure. Cutting, self-injury, a number of different ways it's done, but basically it's when a person has the emotional problems that are so pronounced they feel they can't share, they can't put it into words, they can't articulate the amount of grief or shame or hurt or anger they feel. And it hurts so badly emotionally that they resort to self-injury physically because it takes their mind off the other pain. When I go to a dentist, when he starts putting the stuff in my mouth, the needles and the drills, I'll often pinch my fingers so hard just so I'll think about a different hurt.

There's people who live like that. Now let's see how Jesus loves this man. How does he approach this man? Well, we know he heals him, so that's a great part of it, but there's something else, and I want you to see how Jesus handles the broken, how he approaches a broken person because this is what we ought to do. First of all, Jesus observed him compassionately. He observed him compassionately.

Verse 6 is really striking. It says, Now a certain man who had been there who had an infirmity 38 years, when Jesus saw him lying there, out of this huge, miserable crowd, Jesus sees one guy. He saw them all. He knew them all, but he zeroes in on one person, one solitary human being. He saw him, and this is really the great story of Jesus. He was able to speak to crowds and move crowds, and people would say after he would speak, never a man spoke like this man, and yet you could get him one on one, and he would be so individual and engaging with Nicodemus or the woman at the well or this needy man here in our story. Loving the broken begins by how we see the broken.

It's by how we observe them. That's Skip Heiseck with a message from his series Jesus Loves People. Now, here's Skip to share how you can help keep this broadcast going strong, connecting more people like you to the gospel of Jesus. You know, it doesn't matter how many times you've failed in life. You can still find hope and freedom in Jesus.

In fact, God sent his Son for that very purpose, to heal the brokenhearted, to set the captives free. That's a message we want the whole world to hear. And when you give a gift today, you will not only keep these messages coming to you, but you'll help more people know the good news of Jesus Christ. Here's how you can give right now. Give us a call at 800-922-1888 to give a gift today.

800-922-1888. Or visit connectwithskip.com slash donate. That's connectwithskip.com slash donate. Your generosity will keep his biblical encouragement coming your way and help change lives. Did you know there's an exciting biblical resource available right at your fingertips through your mobile device? Skip has several Bible reading plans available in the YouVersion Bible app. Simply download the app and search Skip Heisig. Now, before we go, tune in to watch Connect with Skip Heisig on the Hillsong Channel on Saturdays at 4.30 p.m. Mountain or catch it on TBN on Sundays at 5.30 a.m. Eastern. Check your local listings. Next week, Skip Heisig shows you the perfect example Christ set on how to love broken people. Make a connection Make a connection At the foot of the crossing Cast all burdens on his word Make a connection Connect with Skip Heisig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.