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It's really good to uh be here. And I love Central and really have been uh connected in a long way. Um long time ago, uh Roy Lawson, who was pastor here for a long time, uh mentored me, kind of took me as a puppy and like helped me uh figure out some things. And then Cal and Lisa have been friends of Diane and I for a long time. And Sean and Jen, uh, we served together uh on staff for almost a decade and then in the same city for another decade. And uh just I don't know of a more capable leader um right now uh than Sean. He's just doing a phenomenal job. Love him. So it's great to be here, good to uh see what you guys do, love the impact you have in your city and uh grateful uh for the time. What I want to do is take just a moment and pray for us. You know, we all have different stuff. We we come in the room and sometimes we land in this trap of going, you know, what's happening in my life is what's happening in everybody's life, but that's not true. Some of you have had a great week, some of you have had a terrible week, some of you have got some big mountain challenges in front of you, others of you feel like you're just kind of uh cruising and doing really well. So I just want to take a moment to pray. Because you know how it is. This morning, some of you uh coming in, man, it's just been a terrific morning for you, are they? Others of you, you fought all the way here, and then you got here and went, hi, how are you? You know, and so I get it. We're we're not in the same spot. So let's just pray, ask God to meet us, whatever we got going on, whatever challenges in front of us, and uh invite the Lord into those things. Would you pray with me? Father, we are we are thankful for the opportunity to gather and worship and the reminder as we worship together already today of your love for us and uh the hope and promise and goodness and grace that comes through Jesus. And Father, you know the things we have happening in our lives right now, the things that are good, bad, and ugly, and just want to invite you into the middle of those things. And Lord, we we try, we do our best, we try to sort how to manage our way through, and yet, Lord, we just need to open our hands and allow you to meet us at that point of need. And Lord, whatever things I'm anxious about, worried over stressed about right now, I pray you'll help me set those aside and allow you to speak into my heart and life as we gather in this place today, Father. We just we just thank you for your love, for your grace. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Years ago, I picked up this story about a truck driver, Larry Walters, who was 33, lived in Southern California, and the article said that he had always wanted to fly, but had never actually been on an airplane. And so uh one weekend he and his buddies decided they were gonna solve that problem. They got together uh in his Southern California backyard and um and they took a lawn a lawn chair, like those aluminum lawn chairs with the fraying straps, you know, those old things, and they staked it to the ground. And then they got 30 weather balloons, filled them with helium, and tied them to the chair. And then Larry got in the chair and they put a rope around him so he wouldn't fall out. They gave him uh, this is how old this was, they gave him a C B radio, didn't have a cell phone, and gave him a C B radio so he could report on what he was seeing as he cruised over the neighborhood. Uh they gave him a BB gun to shoot the balloons when it was time to come down, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, because you know they give snacks on flights, and a six-pack of beer in case he got thirsty, which I think is probably how this whole thing got upside down to begin with for these guys. Larry is strapped in, he's ready to go, his friends are anxious, and they cut the rope loose. And instead of leisurely floating over his neighborhood like he thought he was gonna do, he shot almost 16,000 feet in the air through the approach corridor into LAX. Can you imagine the pilots going, man, what in the world was that? And Larry started shooting his BB gun as fast as he could, right? So he lands, and the reporters are there, the police are there, the FAA showed up. I mean, it was a big deal, made the national news. He ended up on the Tonight Show and Oprah. There was all kinds of stuff he did. But one of the reporters that I picked the story off of asked him, Larry, were you afraid? He said, I was frightened out of my mind. And then they said, Would you ever do this again? He said, Not in a million years. This was like a really stupid idea. And then one reporter said to him, Well, why'd you do it? And I loved his answer. Larry said, Well, you can't just sit there, can you? You know, can you imagine, like shooting up like that, and and your whole life is now at risk. Now, since he did it, a whole bunch of people have tried this same trick of uh cruising around. So some of you want to do it? I'll know where it all started. You were at church last weekend, right? So, you know, there are things that that are disruptor moments in our lives that kind of break up the mundane. I mean, Larry and his friends were just kind of doing life, rocking along, and then they get this idea. I'm amazed at how many of us have dreams and ambitions and things we're gonna do and hope to do, but somehow end up just kind of, just kind of settling. I mean, you know how it is. Tomorrow morning you're gonna get up at the same old time, you're gonna brush the same old teeth, you're gonna drive the same old job, you're gonna see the same old people, you're gonna do the same old thing, you're gonna have the same old lunch, you're gonna leave at the same old time, you're gonna come back to the same old house, you're gonna see the same old people again, you're gonna have the same old dinner, watch the same old show, head to bed, brush the same old teeth, get in bed, ask the same old question, get the same old answer. Some of you are gonna get that on the way home. And then tomorrow you're gonna wake up and do it all over again. How is it that we get in these moments where where there's a disruptor to it? I want to look at a disruption moment that's kind of in a big deal way, and it's a place where Jesus asked a question. And to be honest with you, I didn't grow up in the church, and and and so when I was reading the Bible early on, this was one of those passages that I went, there's no way it happened like this. It just it there's did it didn't go like this. We're gonna look at John chapter 5. If you have your Bibles, I want to invite you to turn over there, grab it on your phone. John chapter 5. John, one of the gospel writers, tells us the story of Jesus, gives us these details, these pictures. And here in John 5, here is a scene that's gonna unfold that's actually a disruptor moment. And Jesus does ask a big deal question. I'm gonna start in verse 1. Sometime later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for a feast of the Jews. Now, Jesus was growing in popularity now. The disciples were with him, he was uh often uh traveling and doing ministry. The crowds were growing, they were impressed with his teaching, he was doing miracles. It was kind of a big deal. And now he'd been up in Galilee, and now he's coming back into the city of Jerusalem for a festival. They were often coming into Jerusalem. And the scripture says there is in Jerusalem near the sheepgate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda, and it is surrounded by five covered colonnades. Now, when you go into the old city of Jerusalem today, the sheep gate is now walled off, but you can still see where it was. You can see the arch, you can see how they entered, and excavated inside that sheepgate are these pools. They were called the pools of Bethesda. And here was the deal. The sheepgate was a commerce gate. It's where they would bring the livestock in, the produce in. There was a lot of merchants there. There was a lot of commercial activity inside that sheepgate, a lot of coming and going. But inside the gate were these natural pools that they had now covered with porches and had built pavilions around them, and uh, and it had the legend for being a place of healing. Bethesda. That's where we get our word, Bethesda nursing, Bethesda health care. And here was the reputation of that place. That when the water stirred, the first person in the water would be healed because what they thought was an angel would have dipped into the water and caused the pool to stir or bubble, and whoever got in first would be healed from whatever affliction they had. And so we know from history, and we know here in Scripture, that lots of people with infirmities, physical and emotional, uh, would come to these pools and hang out and be there hoping to be the first one. Now, there must have been some healings there. Like maybe in Lourdes uh in southern France, where where there have been uh supposed healings, or Guadalupe, where you can go in Mexico and see the crutches along the wall. Where people go to a place, they they they do the right thing, they say the right thing, they act the right way, and some kind of healing occurs for them. And that's what's happening here. In fact, the scripture says a great number of disabled people used to lie: the blind, the lame, the paralyzed, all kinds of issues. Uh physical, mental, emotional, uh things that they were wanting to be healed from. Can you imagine what it was like around those pools? Now, they were there for two reasons. Maybe three. One was this was where they had community. They connected with others around these pools. Secondly, it was this longing, this hoping for a healing. And third, the only way they could have earned an income in that day was to uh beg people as they would pass by. And if this was a place where there was a lot of commerce going on, it would make sense that they would be there. But can you imagine also the longing and the hoping that whatever it is that you needed to be healed from, that maybe, just maybe, it would happen for you in these pools. So here's where we get kind of this turn. Verse 5 One who was there had been an invalid for 38 years. Now we don't get any other information about him. We don't learn uh who he is, we don't get any information about where he's from, we don't know anything about his family. We don't know, had he been an invalid uh like this, unable to walk since he was a child, or maybe it was a disease or an accident or something else that occurred to him, and and now here he was. But for 38 years he'd been in this condition, and now he's here at this pool. And I would guess that anytime the water did bubble or surge, man, the commotion that would have happened around those pools is like, man, I want to get in. I want to be healed, I want to get better from this thing I have going on. Now we know, we know actually that these pools were fed by springs from the hills around the city of Jerusalem, and those springs would surge once in a while and cause the pool to bubble. But if you were there in Jesus' day, this was a place of healing. Verse 6, when Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he'd been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, Do you want to get well? This was where I have a had a huge disconnect with the story when I first read. Like, no, it couldn't have happened like this. Like, no, we're missing some stuff. They didn't tell the whole story here. This isn't how it must have happened. Because now Jesus is coming in, he's with his disciples. Here's this man who's laying by a pool, hoping that maybe he can be healed. Jesus sees, learns he's been in this condition for a long time, looks down at him, and says, Do you want to get well? And I thought everything I'd ever heard about Jesus was he was kind and compassionate, generous, hopeful, encouraging. I'm from New York. I get straight up rude. Yo, dude, that's in the Greek here. Yo, dude. I bet you want to be better. You want to walk? Like, man, that's harsh. Like, who does? I'm thinking when I first read this, come on, Jesus, you could do better. Like, chat him up a little bit. Hey, my name's Jesus. What's your name? Where are you from? How are things going for you today? Learn a little bit about him. Learn his story. Hear what's that? Quote a psalm to him, for goodness sake. Like, be spiritual with them here. Do you want to get well? Man, that's a rough question for somebody who's at the pool. Why else would you be at the pool? Of course I want to be well. That's why I'm here. Like, I'm I'm here because I'm hoping to get better. Now, to be honest, what I first thought was a rude and almost embarrassing question, I've discovered is a phenomenal question, and it's a question that I got to answer, and you gotta answer, and it's actually not an easy question to answer. You want to get well? I mean, 38 years is a long time to live with your stuff. All the all the ways that you know you and I manage, because not all of the ways we need to get well are physical, are they? There's stuff that trips us up, that thing that we think we're gonna get past, and somehow we we don't, and we feel bad about, we're embarrassed, we have shame over, and there's there's all the stuff that goes with things, and we've we've managed, haven't we? You and I have learned to manage around our our our stuff, our disabilities, whatever they might be. We've made life work, we compensate for them. We it's a 38 years a long time. Hoping that you're gonna get better. And you're at the pool. I mean, you went to the place where you thought you should be. And so Jesus asked a question. And here's his response, sir. He says, I have no one to help me in the pool when the water is stirred. While I'm trying to get in, someone always gets in ahead of me. Jesus asks, Do you want to get well? That's a yes or no question, isn't it? And this guy gives a different answer than yes or no. Here's what he says Jesus says, Do you want to get well? And he says, I would if I could, but I can't, so I'm not. I would like to be better. I really would. But it's not my fault. I would be better. But every time, every time, somebody gets in ahead of me. If I could be better, I would be better. But I'm not. I'm just kind of stuck here. Sounds like me. You want to get well? Oh man, I do. I really do. But you know, you know, all those things from the past that have marked me and shaped me and created issues for me. It's not my fault. For a whole bunch of us, it was our parents, or it was a spouse, or an ex or a coach, or a boss, or a friend who hurt us, marked us, shaped us. And don't dismiss that stuff. Some of you have faced some horrific things in life. You've been you've been damaged by that. You've been hurt by that. And some of us have made some really dumb choices, and those dumb choices, multiplied over time, have created issues that we can't fix on our own anymore. And and and and they mark us, they shape us, they disable us in so many ways. But it's not my fault. I mean, life is hard, it's difficult, isn't it? There's a lot of challenges out there. Dina and I have 10 grandkids, and and uh here's a picture of two of them that were born five days apart. Uh we we love Olivia and Cooper. Ain't that an awesome picture? It's one of my favorite pictures of those two. I mean, and look at them. Like, don't they look like they got like a mortgage and kids and problems? Like, man, we are never gonna this is man, life is really hard right now. I mean, not the look both of them have, it's uh like I love this picture. They're actually both 10 years old now. Cooper, uh, on the right, Cooper uh has been battling leukemia the last 18 months. Life's been hard for him. He asked me a while back, hey Papa, doesn't God make you the way he wants you to be? Yeah, buddy. Well, how come he made me have cancer? That's a tough question for a nine-year-old, now 10 to be asking. He's doing great, and I mean he's really doing well, and it's work, and he's got another six months to go with chemo, and we're really pleased, and the prognosis is great, and just two weeks ago, Cooper, who's had to mature a lot faster than his friends, gave his life to Jesus. I had the chance to baptize him just a few weeks ago. It was an awesome time for our family. You know, but here's the deal man, life sucks sometimes, doesn't it? And sometimes it's hard for us. And we want our lives to be better. We we want to get past our stuff. But too many of us hang on to all those wounds and hurts and disappointments and heartaches we've had. And I'm not diminishing those for you, but here's what I believe a big chunk of us, almost all of us in the room, need to do. We need to quit hoping for a better past. Because we're not getting one. And I won't get past my past when I get stuck just hanging by the pool, hoping that somehow things are gonna get fixed. Do you want to get well? Jesus asked. Man, that's a great question. I I've been doing this people thing, honestly, a lot longer than than I care to admit. I can't think of a time that that I haven't uh at our uh congregation when I was preaching there that I didn't have someone come out during one of our services and say, man, Rick, I'd really like my life to be. I don't want to be this angry, uh, my relationship isn't good, or marriage struggles, or got problems with our kids, or I get, I'm I'm I'm hung up in this addiction. I keep trying to get past. Like, I like I I I wanna, I wanna get well, I wanna be better. And early on in my ministry, I was like, you know, Joe Pastoral guy, right? I was like, oh man, how do I help you with that? And I bet you do, and I bet here's a support group I can hook you up with, or come and see her. And we need the tools and resources for those things to happen, and I loved helping people connect to those. But after doing this for so long, sometimes now when people say that to me, what I want to do is just look at them and say, Yeah, right. You don't want to get better. What you want is the pain you're feeling right now to go down. And when the pain goes down, you're gonna go back to doing whatever it was you were doing that got you in this spot to begin with. Because we don't really want to change, do we? Change is hard. I mean, if this guy was gonna get better, things were gonna change for him. His relationships were probably gonna change, how he'd been earning his income was gonna change, what he'd been doing all day long, most days was likely gonna, there was a whole bunch of stuff that was gonna have to get different if he was gonna get better. He didn't want to, maybe he didn't want to get better. Because for most, we don't change until the pain of staying like we are is greater than the pain that comes with making whatever change we have to make in our life. That we aren't changing until being like this is more painful than us trying to do something different. We don't change when we see the light. We change when we feel the heat. Jesus asked, Do you want to get well? What would happen if we did? What would our lives look like if we were better? I didn't like this question the first time I read it because I thought it was rude. And I don't like this question most of the time now because I don't like being put on the spot. Do I want to get well? And I got a whole pile of excuses why I'm not. Then Jesus said to the man, get up, pick up your mat and walk. And at once the man was cured. He picked up his mat and walked. I mean, that's a big deal. Picture this. All the eyes are on him. Jesus says, Do you want to get well? And now this guy's got to respond. And then Jesus says, Okay, hey, dude, pick up your mat and start walking. Now, I I'm impressed with this guy. I wish we knew more about him from the story. I wish there was another chapter about what happened after this. I mean, can you imagine the courage this took? Do you want to get well? Of course I do. I am here at the pool. It is this pool that is going to make me well. And if I could ever get it right, I'll be better sometime. And Jesus. He certainly wasn't the first guy passing by that cheap gate by those pools who was offering up a cure for all these people. He wasn't the first guy maybe coming through and selling something to them. Can you imagine the courage it took for this guy to actually try to pick himself up off that mat that he'd been unable to do for 38 years? That's a big deal. And for those of you who want to step into the healing that I believe God wants to have in our hearts and our lives, in fact, we make a big deal about the physical healing, but there were hundreds of people around this pool, and as far as we know, only this guy got physically healed. I think there's more to the story here about what God really wants to do if we seek him, find him, trust him. And now he's got to respond. And so he starts to lift himself. And then there's also a big deal. Pick up your mat and walk. You know what? I don't know if I want to pick my mat up because, man, I've been stuffing stuff under that mat for a long time. Things I don't want you to know, and things that there's a lot of dirt under there. There's a lot of things that I've been kind of keeping, and if I pick that up, it's going to be seen for everybody. I mean, him getting up and walking is miraculous. And it is also courageous. And it is also exactly the kind of courage God invites me to put my trust in Jesus, to put my hope in him. And he responds to Jesus and he walks away from his past. Can you imagine what it's like for all those people? I mean, you think there was a commotion when the water stirred. Now, this dude is walking. I mean, his friends are celebrating, he's celebrating, he can't believe this is happening. But then there are always the people that bust up the party, aren't there? Happen to be the religious leaders here. Look what happens next. The day on which this took place was a Sabbath. And so the Jews said to the man who had been healed. Now remember, he'd been healed. They'd seen him day after day. They they knew this guy. I mean, it wasn't like an unfamiliar thing. He's now walking. I mean, that's a big deal. It's the Sabbath, and the law forbids you to carry your mat. Like, seriously? Like, really? That's like what what you you you you're saying. This guy's walking, and all they see is the mat. Happens with religious people. If we're not careful, it happens sometimes in church. Now you get your act together, you get cleaned up first, and you're made, you know, you you you figure it out, and then you're gonna be okay. But that's not how the gospel story goes. And what I love about this church, and what I love about Sean's leadership, is you all have managed to continue to make changes that need to be made so that people can see Jesus for the first time. That you continue to shift patterns, things that are kind of ingrained and etched in sometimes, just so that others in the community actually might find the hope and freedom and grace that comes in Jesus. For too many of us, we get locked in in how we think it needs to be, because it was that way for us. But the reality is Jesus says, This guy, get up and walk, and people are celebrating, he's celebrating, and the religious leaders are going, man, dude, you're busting a rule. You got your mat. You'd have been fine with the walking, but the mat. You know, we hang by a lot of pools, don't we, hoping it's gonna make our lives better. I grew up in uh Syracuse, New York. The state fair was there every year. And my mom and dad would take my sister and I uh to the fair, and we'd get there, and we'd walk through the gate, and and I always wanted to go back to the back corner of the fairgrounds where the midway was. You know, they had the rides and the games and stuff back there. That's where I wanted to go right away. But my mom and dad, you know, they wanted to go see like the butter statue and the world's largest baked potato and stuff like that, right? And I was like, And not me. I wanted to go back. And then when we get back there, what I really wanted to do was in the back corner of the midway part of the fairgrounds was this circus tent. And on the circus tent it said, Come see the amazing wonders of the world. The bearded woman, the chicken-faced boy, the alligator man. And I I mean, I I I would beg my dad, I would beg him, Dad, I want to go see this. There was a toothless old man with a straw hat that would say for two bucks I could see life-changing stuff. And I knew I needed that, I wanted that. And my dad would say, seriously, like, it's just a joke. We're not spending our money, we're not wasting our money, we are not doing that. I was in sixth grade when uh my dad dropped me and four of my friends off at the gate to the fairgrounds. No parents. Straight past the butter statue, back to the midway. My friends went for the rides and the games. I went to the tent. There was the same toothless old man, same straw hat, five bucks inflation now. I didn't care. I got in line, I walked up to the window, I paid my five dollars, I got my ticket, I was standing in line, I was sweaty, I was nervous. I knew this was going to change my life. All my life that I could remember. I was hoping for this moment. And I walked in and I rounded the first corner, and it was like, but I shuffled along with the rest of the crowd and I got to the next exhibit. Like, seriously? I walked out 30 minutes later, so disappointed. My dad was right. Do you know how many times since my sixth grade year at the fairgrounds I've gone to the window and bought the ticket that I knew and that this will make my life better. This will fix my stuff. This will bring what it is I think I need. Window after window after window. Only to walk away disappointed because my father was right. Not gonna get healed at the pool. I'm not gonna get paralyzed by my religiosity rules. I'm not gonna get fixed for my stuff until I see Jesus. And it's a long list, isn't it? Of things that paralyze us. Relationship issues, hurt habits, hang ups, drugs, pornography, loneliness, emptiness, anger, greed, lust, anxiety, depression. It's a long list is so long. And into that list, Jesus says to you and me, do you want to get well? Do you want to get well? We wait a long time for healing sometimes. We get stuck in our stuff, change is hard. We think the pool, whatever the pools are, are gonna fix us. Or I'll just be strong enough, I'll be self-determined enough to get past my self-determination. And the reality is, Jesus says to you, to me, forget the pool. Trust me, pick up your mat and walk. Do you want to get well? Jesus asked. Well, you can't just sit there, can you?