GRACE INTENSIVE 1 — THE MAN WHO GAVE UP (latest cut)

THIRTY-EIGHT YEARS. Hold that number tonight. Thirty-eight years. That is a generation. That is longer than some of you have been alive. That is a man lying on a mat, a few feet from the answer, for thirty-eight years. And nothing happened. Tonight i want to talk to you about the saddest man in the gospel of John. Not the blind man. Not the leper. Not the woman caught in adultery. This man. Because he is the one who lay closest to grace and got the least out of it. Here's what we are doing over the next two days. Five sessions. One subject. GRACE. I am not going to spend those five sessions convincing you grace exists, because you already believe it exists. You wouldn't be in a room on a Thursday night in August if you didn't. I'm going to spend them on something else. Why so many people who believe in grace are not receiving any. That's the subject. That's the whole weekend. July 2019. I was at a conference, eighteen thousand seats, and i had jet lag so badly that i slept through the alarm and got there too late to find my seat down the front. So i stood at the back and listened to the end of somebody else's message. I had been in ministry a long time by then. I thought i understood grace. I had studied it. I had preached it. I could tell you it was a free gift and that without it you don't get to heaven. Looking back i was about two inches deep. And in one sentence, from the back of a stadium, God had my full attention. All i heard was this. YOU NEED TO START LIVING IN SUPPLY AND STOP LIVING IN DEMAND. YOU NEED TO START LIVING IN GRACE AND NOT IN WORKS. Supply and demand. The most ordinary phrase in economics. I had heard it a thousand times. I had never once heard a preacher put it next to the word grace. That moment changed my life, because i suddenly saw that i had been living in demand. That is why we are here for two days. The word is CHARIS. It means favour. Read what it carries. * Undeserved approval. * Unmerited blessing. * Unconditional love. * Beneficial kindness. * Providential care. * Preferential treatment. * Exceptional privileges. * Full acceptance. * Unconstrained generosity. * Ongoing help and assistance. That is one word. That is the word sitting in front of you in about a hundred and fifty places in your New Testament, and most of us have reduced it to a nice feeling on a Sunday. We have trivialised it. It has become so common we've lost the power of it. GRACE IS THE UNEARNED, UNMERITED, UNDESERVED FAVOR OF GOD, AND IT IS THE POWER OF GOD GIVING YOU THE ADVANTAGE. It means you have the edge, because somebody else is working and fighting on your behalf, and that somebody is Jesus. When Joseph found favour in Potiphar's eyes he was put over the whole estate. When Esther found favour in the king's eyes he gave her half a kingdom. That is what the word does when it lands on a life. Jeff Arif John 5:1–15 "Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. 2 Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. 3 Here a great number of disabled people used to lie – the blind, the lame, the paralysed. 5 One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, 'Do you want to get well?' 7 'Sir,' the invalid replied, 'I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.' 8 Then Jesus said to him, 'Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.' 9 At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked. The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, 10 and so the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, 'It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.' 11 But he replied, 'The man who made me well said to me, "Pick up your mat and walk."' 12 So they asked him, 'Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?' 13 The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there. 14 Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, 'See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.' 15 The man went away and told the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus who had made him well." Now. FIVE COVERED COLONNADES. Five covered walkways, surrounding that pool on every side. Five in the scripture is the number of grace. Look at where this man is lying. He is not far from help. He is a few feet from help. He is not outside the building. He is under the roof. He is inside the architecture of grace. Grace is the shape of the place. Grace is the air he is breathing. Five colonnades over his head for thirty-eight years. HE WAS CLOSER TO GRACE THAN ANYONE ELSE IN JERUSALEM AND HE GOT NOTHING OUT OF IT. Church, do you know how many people that describes in this room tonight. You are not far from GRACE. You're in the building. You have been in the building for years. You know the words to the songs. You know what a good sermon sounds like. You are lying under five colonnades. So other than salvation, what evidence do you have in your life that you are living under Grace. What are your emotions communicating to you. Our emotions are the flashing lights that tell us what's happening our soul. Here's what people usually say about this man. They say he lacked faith. I don't think that's it. I think something happened before that. Look at what he says when the Son of God asks him a direct question. John 5:6–7 "When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, 'Do you want to get well?' 7 'Sir,' the invalid replied, 'I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.'" Three things in one sentence. Listen to them. "I have no one." "While i am trying." "Someone else goes ahead." Thirty-eight years of the same three sentences. Thirty-eight years of the same explanation. He has that answer ready before you have finished the question, because he has given that answer ten thousand times. He has built the perfect account of why breakthrough cannot reach him. Here is the thing i want you to see. He did not just have a condition. He had a LIFESTYLE built around the condition. He knew where to put his mat. He knew which spot caught the shade. He knew what time the crowds came. He knew who would give him money and who would walk straight past. He knew which of the other sick people would listen to him complain and which ones would not. He had adapted to paralysis. He had accepted limitation. He had made peace with his suffering. He was not at that pool to get healed any more. He was at that pool to survive. Say it slowly. He wasn't there to get healed. He was there to survive. Now put that next to what Jesus says he came for. Read the whole run, because the sentence everybody quotes has a door and a shepherd standing in front of it. John 10:7–11 "Therefore Jesus said again, 'Very truly I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. 8 All who have come before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep have not listened to them. 9 I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. They will come in and go out, and find pasture. 10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. 11 I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.'" They will come in and go out, AND FIND PASTURE. God's plan for you is not survival. God's plan for you is pasture. Life to the full. Some of you have quietly swapped one for the other and never told anybody. You've accepted the marriage. You've accepted the diagnosis. You've settled for where your kids are at. You have resigned yourself to the anxiety, to the depression, to the same conversation about money every January. You don't call it giving up. You call it being realistic. You have arranged your whole life around a thing God never asked you to carry. HAVE YOU SETTLED DOWN. HAVE YOU. IS THAT IT FOR YOU. Here is the thing in this story that almost nobody preaches, and it changes everything. John 5:9–13 "The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, 10 and so the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, 'It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.' 11 But he replied, 'The man who made me well said to me, "Pick up your mat and walk."' 12 So they asked him, 'Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?' 13 The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there." Read that again. A man gets a generation of his life back and the religious leaders are upset about the MAT. Not one word about the healing. Not one question about the thirty-eight years. Just, who told you to carry that. Now. Do you think it's an accident that Jesus healed this man on a Sabbath. Do you think it's an accident that out of every instruction he could have given, he told a man to pick up the one object the system had a rule about. Across the gospels there are seven Sabbath miracles. Seven, the number of completion. Bethesda sits at number four. Dead centre. Jesus is not being careless with the calendar. Jesus is waging a war. They had taken God's gift of rest and turned it into a burden. Thirty-nine forbidden categories of work, and carrying is one of them. A system built to control people and restrict freedom. Performance instead of grace. Rules instead of relationship. Surviving a system instead of resting in God. Here is Jesus on that, in full. Mark 2:23–28 "One Sabbath Jesus was going through the cornfields, and as his disciples walked along, they began to pick some ears of corn. 24 The Pharisees said to him, 'Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?' 25 He answered, 'Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need? 26 In the days of Abiathar the high priest, he entered the house of God and ate the consecrated bread, which is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions.' 27 Then he said to them, 'The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. 28 So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.'" THE SABBATH WAS MADE FOR MAN, NOT MAN FOR THE SABBATH. So Jesus heals him on the wrong day and tells him to carry the wrong thing. That is not an accident. That is a statement. Law tells you what you must do to be approved. Grace tells you what God has already done. Law says perform perfectly or you are disqualified. Grace says you are accepted because of Jesus. Law breeds striving and measuring. Grace produces receiving and rest. John 1:14–18 "The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. 15 (John testified concerning him. He cried out, saying, 'This is the one I spoke about when I said, "He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me."') 16 Out of his fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given. 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known." Verse sixteen. GRACE IN PLACE OF GRACE ALREADY GIVEN. The older translations say grace upon grace. It is wave after wave. You never get to the end of the supply, because you never get to the end of him. Titus 2:11–14 "For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. 12 It teaches us to say 'No' to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, Read verse twelve out loud twice. GRACE TEACHES US TO SAY NO. Anybody who tells you grace makes people loose has never read the next sentence after the one they are quoting. GRACE IS GREATER THAN RULES. FAVOUR IS STRONGER THAN PERFORMANCE. KINDNESS DISRUPTS LEGALISM. Here is what that means for you. The mat is the thing you are still carrying that religion says you shouldn't be able to carry. The failure. The divorce. The years you wasted. The thing in your history you assume disqualifies you. Jesus says pick it up and walk straight through the middle of them with it. Let me say something here so nobody misunderstands anything this weekend. GRACE IS NOT A MAGIC WORD. IT DOESN'T GET YOU A MIRACLE JUST BECAUSE YOU SAY YOU ARE UNDER GRACE. YOU HAVE TO CONNECT TO THE PERSON CALLED GRACE. That's the whole thing. Grace has a face. Its Jesus. James 4:6–10 "But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: 'God opposes the proud but shows favour to the humble.' 7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. He gives us MORE grace. Grace is being handed out. Humility is what receives it. Pride is what holds on to self-sufficiency and calls it responsibility. So how do you actually receive. Practically. Tomorrow morning, in your kitchen, with the day already going wrong. Here is the order, and the order is the whole thing. Most of us pray in exactly the wrong sequence, then wonder why prayer feels like begging. So let me finish where we started. There is a man on a mat. Under five colonnades. A few feet from the water. Thirty-eight years. Everything he needed was over his head the whole time. Don't be him. Jesus is walking up to you right now. Maybe you have been stuck for years. You stopped receiving. Faith went quiet. You've got your explanation ready. You have accepted the condition. There is hope for you tonight. Let me read you the last word on it, all of it, and then i'm going to stop talking.