John Chapter 5:7-17

Right now, keep your eyes off of yourselves.

You can sit there and go, Well, I've tried this before and it didn't work. I've tried before and I've failed. God never fails. Without Him, you can't do anything.

With Him, all things are possible. Maybe you're here this morning thinking, you know, I tried living a Christian life and I couldn't do it. I figured maybe I just wasn't called to be a Christian.

I couldn't do it. But Jesus died for you, to forgive you of your sins and to strengthen you so that you could walk out the Christian life. And that, friend, that's the only way you can do it.

And perhaps this morning is the day that will change the rest of your life. Jesus says to come to Him for forgiveness. Ask Him for forgiveness.

Turn from your ways to His ways. Welcome to Cross the Bridge with David McGee. David is a senior pastor of the Bridge in Kernersville, North Carolina. As he continues teaching in John chapter 5 with the message, It's Possible with God, we want to welcome one of David McGee's associate pastors, D.A.

Brown, into the program today. Welcome, brother. Hey, Bob. I hope if you're listening right now, you do not change the radio station. With all that's going on in our country, with all that's going on in the world, God wants to speak directly to you today. Maybe you're feeling hopeless. Maybe you're feeling fearful.

Maybe you're feeling like you can't do anything about what's going on around you. Well, God can. And today, He wants to speak to you right where you are at.

I hope you're listening. And this is an excellent time to listen as David McGee begins his teaching, It's Possible with God. We are in John chapter 5 and verse 10. The Jews therefore said to Him, Who was cured? It is the Sabbath.

It is not lawful for you to carry your bed. And He answered them and said, He who made me well, said to me, Take up your bed and walk. Then they asked Him, Who is the man that said to you, Take up your bed and walk? But the one who was healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn a multitude being in that place.

Again, you know, it strikes me and it's an amazing thing. Look how quietly Jesus did this miracle. The guy didn't know his name.

He didn't know who it was. Jesus is so cool, isn't He? Jesus is awesome.

You know why? He didn't say, Well, I'm Jesus Christ of Jesus Christ Ministries International Incorporated. I'm about to heal you.

And I want to invite you to attend an evening with Jesus Christ, presented by Jesus Christ Ministries International Incorporated. He didn't do that. He quietly healed the man.

I think that's the way most healings, real healings, legitimate healings happen, quietly. So God gets the glory. It's amazing how the religious people are missing this miracle. Look at the questions. They didn't say, Hey, aren't you that guy that was by the pool for 38 years? They didn't ask Him that. They were missing a miracle right underneath their nose.

Why? Because they were being religious. Guys, you know what? This happens now, doesn't it? We get so religious. Understand, when I use the word religion, and I know that it's used in a positive light in the book of James, but when I use the word religion, what I think of is an empty vein tradition of man trying to arrogantly reach up to God in his own works. And that's not the good news. That's not the gospel. The gospel is that Jesus, the Lord, has reached down to us in a miraculous way. In verse 14, afterwards, Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, See, you have been made well. Sin no more, lest the worst thing come upon you. That's an interesting thing to say.

And it makes me wonder, and I don't know, and some of the commentaries get more in depth, but they're being pretty assumptive, presumptuous. But this man apparently might have done something to cause his condition. Now, sin and illness aren't always tied together, but let's be honest, sometimes they are. And Jesus has given him a warning, and I think it's a good warning.

Why? Because, you know, many of us who have been delivered from certain things need to be very careful with those things. If you've been delivered from drugs or from alcohol or pornography or whatever, be very careful in those areas, because the Lord is desiring to seal off those areas, and we shouldn't be playing around with those areas.

Because if you give a toe to Satan, let me guarantee you, he's going to run with it. And if a strategy has proven effective in your life before, he will go back to that strategy. So be careful.

Be careful in these areas. Now, I've seen people get careless in an area that they've been delivered from, and they regret it, because truly it was worse than it was before. Now, that being said, let me say this. I totally reject the concept of once an addict, always an addict.

I don't believe that. I believe you can be healed and you can be set free, but you need to be careful in this area. You know, Jesus said, pick up your mat and walk and leave. He didn't say, you know, you should probably leave your mat here because, you know, who knows how long this healing thing will last, you know, you might be lame tomorrow.

So just leave the mat there, prepare yourself that you might be lame again. He didn't do that. I think when God healed somebody, He healed somebody. You see, in the Hebrew Scriptures in the Old Testament, when He heals somebody, He heals people of leprosy, and their skin is softer than before they got healed.

It says they have the skin of a baby. Well, I tell you what, that's something to attain in the Middle Eastern desert. Because when God heals somebody, God heals somebody. And I think this also suggests the man's spiritual healing. God's greatest miracle, God's greatest gift, His greatest offer is to forgive us of our sins.

What an amazing thing. And yet, do you realize that it's not always our priority? I mean, what if Kevin had come up here this morning and said, guess what, guys? This week, we went out to the cemetery and we had 25 kids get raised from the dead. Or we had 25 kids who were blind who can now see, 25 deaf kids who can now hear.

What would our response be? Would it have been more enthusiastic than hearing 25 kids got saved? Convictingly to me, yeah. Which is the greater miracle? Salvation by far. It's a miracle we can't even comprehend or understand. We can't even describe to its fullness how God can take a sinner and cleanse him, how God can take somebody that was going to hell and send them to heaven.

My mind can't even wrap around that. See, God's greatest deed met man's greatest need. Don't neglect that glorious offer because it's extended to every person here this morning. In verse 15, the man departed and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. This man wasn't turning in Jesus. He just was proclaiming that Jesus was the one who made him well. That's an awesome statement. I mean, I'm here this morning.

You know why? Because Jesus has made me well. Praise God. Not this, not that, not this man or that man or this thing or that thing, but Jesus has made me well. Jesus has made me whole as it says in one version. Tell people about what the Lord has done for you. They can argue doctrine with you.

They can argue prophecy. They cannot argue what God has done in your life. When you tell them, you know, I used to be miserable, now I got the joy of the Lord. I used to be under the burden of sin and now I feel the joy of forgiveness. They can't argue with that.

As a matter of fact, some of them will see that in you and will ask about it. What happened to you? You're different. That's an opportunity to witness. And I've known people, again, this is by far the more awesome miracle that he got forgiven of his sins.

I've seen people who didn't get healed physically, but who did get healed spiritually. I watched my mother-in-law die of cancer, a painful death, but something glorious happened. As the diagnosis came forth and at the point that they were saying, well, this is not curable or operable, we had given her a couple of Pastor Chuck's teaching tapes, and she came back and she said, you know, I really enjoyed those tapes. Do you have some more?

I said, sure, we do. So we gave her four or five more. She came back like two days later and said, hey, these things are great.

Do you have some more of these things? So we gave her like the whole chapter of John, and she was just listening to these tapes all the time. And then we were made aware that she was calling people and saying, you know what, I just want you to know that, you know, I did this to you way back when.

I just want you to know I'm sorry. Ask for your forgiveness. We didn't tell her to do that. She started doing that. Then she started calling people and said, hey, I know you did this to me.

I just want to call and let you know I forgive you. And then one night she went to be with the Lord. She didn't get healed physically until she went to be with the Lord. She got her healing. She got her spiritual healing here. She got her physical healing there. And you know what? God knows.

I wonder, would she have been healed spiritually if she wouldn't have been physically afflicted? We'll be right back with more from David McGee on Cross the Bridge. Right now, here's a word from associate pastor D.A.

Brown. Hey, Bob. Excited to be here today with you, and we want to pray for some people in these cities in our listening audience in California, Santa Maria, Scotia, Shasta, Soledad, Soquel, South Lake Tahoe, and Stockton. God, thank you for the people in these cities listening today. We pray that they would have an expectant heart right now, that you're going to speak to them right where they're at and in the situations they're going through. God, we pray that you would protect them. If there are some in the listening audience who are sick today, we pray that you'd please heal them.

And Lord, we pray that everyone would be in a Bible-teaching, Bible-believing church and give those pastors wisdom on how to navigate the waters in a tumultuous situation. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen.

Thank you, brother. Amen. Amen. Amen.

Amen. Now, let's get back to David McGee as he continues teaching verse by verse. Verse 16. For this reason the Jews persecuted Jesus and sought to kill him because he had done these things on the Sabbath. Man, how twisted religion can make us. When John writes here, he says the Jews, I understand everybody around Jesus at this point is Jewish. He's speaking of the Jewish leaders. And look at how twisted religion can make people or a person or these leaders. This man had been miraculously healed from 38 years of being afflicted and the leaders got upset because he did it on the Sabbath. Life lesson here is religion can get in the way of a relationship with God. Religion can get in the way of a relationship with God. Years ago there was a bumper sticker that said, I'm not religious, I just love the Lord. That was a good one.

That was a good one. People are religious. You ask them if they're going to heaven, they'll tell you, yes, they go to church.

That's not what I ask. Ask if you're going to heaven. Well, I hope so. Well, why do you hope so? God's been good. Anybody depending upon their own goodness to get in heaven is in a great deal of trouble. You can't be that good. Your best day is not good enough because the standard is sinless perfection. None of us can reach that standard of sinless perfection. That's the bad news. Good news is Jesus Christ, when he died on the cross, made the offer to each and every one of us to be washed and wiped clean. But don't trust in religion.

Don't trust in works. You know what's interesting? You think Jesus knew it was the Sabbath? I'm thinking he did. Did he know this guy was going to go into the temple? I'm thinking he did. But he did it anyway, huh?

Yeah, he did. See, and it's interesting because the whole concept of the Sabbath or the Shabbat is interesting. It comes from, in Hebrew it's a hut, stein, shalosh, arabah, hamish, shiva.

Shiva is the number seven. That's where we get our word for Shabbat or the Sabbath. But to shiva oneself in Hebrew is to make a promise.

To make a promise. That's where we get our word for Shabbat or Sabbath. Look what they had twisted the Sabbath into.

And understand guys, there's a couple concepts, let me explain them real quick. There's Levitical, which is according to the Levites, according to the word of God, what you could do and what you couldn't do on the Sabbath. And there was what was called rabbinical rules and regulations, meaning the stuff the rabbis had come up with concerning the Sabbath. I don't see that Jesus ever broke the Levitical law. And some people don't understand that. He did not break God's law.

He was perfect, but he didn't really care about the rabbinical law because they came up with all kinds of silly stuff. They already had false teeth, but you couldn't wear them on the Sabbath because you would technically be carrying something on the Sabbath. Is it just me or is that weird? You couldn't have a handkerchief in your pocket because technically you were carrying it. But if you took your handkerchief out and you pinned it to your lapel, then technically it was part of your clothing and that was okay. You could only walk a certain distance on the Sabbath, but if you had a long rope and you tied it to your house, well, technically you hadn't left your house yet.

So then you could go a little bit further and it'd still be a Sabbath day's journey. Now we laugh because that stuff is so crazy and it's so humorous, but you know, don't pick up any rocks to throw them because we got a lot of weirdness today about church, about the Sabbath and about stuff like that. I hear it all the time.

Years ago when I was playing music and I was a Christian, born again believer, had longer hair than I have now, had an earring in my ear, I confess before you publicly. And this young man that I was ministering to said, well, I see you got your fag tag in. I was like, yeah, okay, whatever. He goes, yeah, that's what my pastor calls it.

I said, really? He goes, yeah, there was a little kid that came to our church, it was like 12 or 13. He came and he sat on the second row.

He was a visitor, never been there before. And in the middle of the teaching, the pastor stopped his teaching, looked down at this young man and said, you know, I'm glad you're here. You're welcome here, but you need to leave your fag tag at home from the pulpit. We had a guy stop in the parking lot out here one day and he asked the people that working in the parking lot, he said, you know, can I come into your church the rest of the way I am?

And I said, sure. And he said, because I was just at a church down the road that I tried to go in and they said if I was going to attend there, I needed to be dressed appropriately, that I could not come in the way that I was dressed. You know, these people are going to have to explain to Jesus this behavior at some point.

I wouldn't want to be in their shoes at that point. We've turned a day of worship, a day of healing and the legalism and empty rituals. We've taken a day and changed it into a prison of regulations and restrictions. And Jesus challenges those things of the day just like he challenged them then, the notion that you need to come dressed a certain way, you're looking a certain way. What was really interesting is when I started digging and seeing the number of times Jesus healed somebody or did something on the Sabbath, you know what I discovered? You know how many times he did it? Seven times. I think so we wouldn't miss the point. There was the demoniac in Capernaum or Kefir Nahum, Peter's mother-in-law, the impotent man in Jerusalem that we're talking about here, the man with the withered hand, the woman bowed together, the man with dropsy and the man born blind. I think he was trying to make a point.

There's no happenstance or circumstances that just, well, the saying is coincidence is not a kosher word is what the rabbis say. Seven times he did this. And healing these people was one of the reasons the religious people of the day hunted him down until they had put him to death on the cross. They hated him. They hated him because he violated their religious rituals. But even in executing him for these violations, that didn't work either, did it?

They didn't stay dead. One more verse. Jesus answered them, He said, My Father has been working until now, and I have been working. Does the Lord work on the Sabbath?

He does. The Lord was showing us with the Sabbath a picture of rest, a picture of Jesus. And keep in mind, too, we get a concept confused from Sunday school. When it says the Lord rested on the seventh day, He didn't rest because He was tired.

He's God. He rests to give us a model of the rest that we can have in Jesus Christ. It was a spiritual concept. The New Living Translation, this verse reads, But Jesus replied, My Father never stops working, so why should I?

I'm just going to touch base on this, but this makes me wonder. They say a day is as a thousand years in the Lord. There's two thousand years since Jesus. There was about four thousand years before that, which means six thousand years brings us to this point. I don't believe that we've been here billions and billions of years. There's too much evidence. If you look at scientific evidence, there is way too much evidence that that whole thing has been made up. And see, there is coming the thousand year reign, the millennial reign of Jesus, which perhaps might represent that Sabbath rest. But you see, then you've got the six thousand years, and then you've got the one thousand years. I'm not dogmatically saying that's the way it is.

I find it very interesting. But Jesus says something here. He says, My Father. If Jesus had said, Our Father, He wouldn't be in trouble at this point, but He said, My Father. When He said that, He placed Himself on the same level of God. And we'll see in the rest of this chapter, they understood what He was saying. They understood the claim that Jesus was saying, I am deity.

I am the same level as God. And they changed the accusation from breaking the Sabbath to blasphemy. And Jesus openly proclaimed His deity, and the religious leaders couldn't disprove it. Of course, yet He went around healing people, proving His deity. And you know what people that say Jesus never said He was God?

You know, they either really haven't read the Bible or studied the Bible, or they're being openly dishonest, because Jesus plainly, and we're going to get into a lot of detail about this next week, but He plainly claimed to be God. And they watched Him display His power, not once, not twice, but over and over and over again. And they stood back helpless. They couldn't silence Him. Oh, oh, they tried to silence Him through execution.

But again, that didn't work. You can't keep Jesus quiet. I think even Pilate knew that. Remember what they said when they said, they said, we want it to seal, we want guards on both sides? Remember what Pilate said? Yeah, do the best you can there, buddy.

Seal it up real good. That's kind of my paraphrase. But meanwhile, you're like, what translation is He reading? Because Jesus won't be silenced. The life lesson there is religion can't silence Jesus.

Religion can't silence. Even with His death came the proclamation that would change the world. It would change history. Change time. Change my life.

Change your life. It's the power of God and still changing lives today. I don't know what's going on in each person's life today. I don't know what you're going through.

I don't know what you're struggling with. I don't know if it's something that you're able to overcome or if it's something that's overwhelming you. But friend, I know that God is able. I know God is able to give you the strength to overcome. Even if you've been dealing with us for 28, 38, 48, 58 years, God is able.

And this morning, I think He's saying to some people, you know what? Get up and walk. Yeah, I know you're lame. You probably won't start out walking real well, but I'm asking you to walk. Right now, keep your eyes off of yourselves.

You can sit there and go, well, I've tried this before and it didn't work. I've tried before and I failed. God never fails. Without Him, you can't do anything.

With Him, all things are possible. Maybe you're here this morning and thinking, you know, I tried living a Christian life and I couldn't do it. And I figured maybe I just wasn't called to be a Christian and I couldn't do it. Jesus died for you, to forgive you of your sins and to strengthen you so that you could walk out the Christian life. And that, friend, that's the only way you can do it.

And perhaps this morning is the day that will change the rest of your life. Jesus says to come to Him for forgiveness, ask Him for forgiveness. Turn from your ways to His ways. Change your mind, literally in the Greek is what repent means.

Change your mind from thinking that you can do it to knowing you can't do it, but He will do it for you. And begin to live out your faith and ask for the power of God to change your life, to change your heart. Friends, do you know for sure that your sins have been forgiven?

You can know right now. I want to lead you in a short, simple prayer, simply telling God you're sorry and asking Him to help you to live for Him. Now, God wants you to pray this prayer so much that He died to give you the opportunity and the ability to ask Him to forgive you.

Please pray this prayer with me out loud right now. Dear Jesus, I believe you died for me, that I could be forgiven. And I believe you were raised from the dead, that I could have a new life. And I've done wrong things. I have sinned, and I'm sorry. Please forgive me of all those things.

Please give me the power to live for you all of my days. In Jesus' name, amen. Friend, if you prayed that prayer according to the Bible, you've been forgiven. You've been born again. So congratulations, friend.

You just made the greatest decision that you will ever make. God bless you. If you prayed that prayer with David for the first time, we'd love to hear from you. You can visit crossthebridge.com to receive our First Steps package with helpful resources to help you begin your walk with Christ. Or you can write to Cross the Bridge at PO Box 12515, Winston-Salem, North Carolina 27117, and share how God is working in your life. Well, DA, before we go, what are some ways that we can bless our listeners? Each day you can wake up with encouragement from Pastor David through the Word of God with his email devotional, life lessons to consider, a daily reading plan, and a thought to meditate on throughout your day from the heart of David McGee. That sounds good, Pastor DA.

And again, it's been great to have you with us on the program today. But tell us, what else can our listeners find on crossthebridge.com? If you're not able to make it to your home church this Sunday, why not join us for our live stream at 10 a.m. Eastern Time, or on Thursday nights at 7 p.m. Eastern Time? Just visit crossthebridge.com and click on our live stream link. There you'll experience a live service from David's home church, The Bridge, in North Carolina. Again, that website is crossthebridge.com. Thanks again for listening, and join us next time as David McGee continues teaching verse by verse in the Gospel of John.