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Pastor Mike will be speaking on strength for your weaknesses. He will be in John 5:1-16.
you are in a masterpiece of God that He has created in Christ Jesus under good works, which God has before ordained that we should walk in them. Church, take up your bed and walk in God’s great purpose for you and you will have great strength in the time of your weakness.
Are you ready? This is Pastor Mike Sanders from the Open Door Church with Hope Worth Having. We are delighted to have you listening in today, excited about today’s program. I want you to take your Bible and join us in the Gospel of John, Chapter 5.
We’re going to continue our study in verses 1 through 16 as we learn strength for your weaknesses. Definitely, there is no fountain of youth, but thankfully, God is one who can energize us and He can continue to show us the way, the truth, and the life.
And today, as we study the Bible, we are going to learn about a miracle that Jesus performed and what the message of this miracle is and how it teaches us some very powerful truths that we can use in our life.
So let’s grab our Bible, let’s get pen and paper, and let’s start learning together in the Gospel of John, strength for your weaknesses. The pull of sin, the force of sin keeps bringing you back into this persistent course of where you continually to make bad choices.
The Scripture says in Romans 7, 15, for I do not understand my own actions, for I do not what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. You know, it’s hard for Christians to realize that. but as a believer that there are times that we do things that we know are wrong and it is because we have this sinful nature within us you say but pastor I have been saved by the blood of Jesus Christ praise God you have been saved by the blood of Christ but I want you to know that your salvation has delivered you from the penalty of sin that is that God is not judging you because you are a sinner and he’s already done that judgment on the cross of on our Savior who bore the penalty of our sins the wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life so my sins have been paid for and I’ve been delivered from that penalty and that if I leave this world I know that heaven is my home why because Christ died for my sins because Christ took the penalty but I want you to understand that the power of sin is still present the presence of sin is still upon my life even as I am living a Christian one might say well why doesn’t God just take us home when we get saved why doesn’t he just get us out of this crazy messed up world when we get saved I’ll tell you why because he needs you and he needs me to be a light he needs all of us the church to be a light to the world we’ve still got a lot of people to reach for Christ amen and you know as we’re trying to reach people for Christ guess what you’re gonna stumble and fumble along the way you’re gonna make some mistakes there’s gonna be some good days in your life and there’s gonna be some bad days there’s gonna be days in your life where you take one step forward and then two back and you’re gonna be frustrated with yourself here’s what I’m trying to say to you that for you to receive the strength of God in your life admit your condition take responsibility for your situation and come to the grips and the understanding that you are in a lifelong battle you are in a persistent course of weakness because of your sinful nature and that there are gonna be times in your life that you are not gonna be all that you should be and that you are gonna fail God miserably now does that excuse our behavior absolutely not we are accountable we are responsible for all that we say and all that we do before God but why do I tell you this so you don’t quit so you don’t become weary so you don’t become overwhelmed I want you to understand the situation that you’re dealing with I want you to know what you’re wrestling with I want you to understand that you are still battling the flesh every day of your life and here’s what happens to some of you is that you have a bad week maybe a bad month maybe some of you’ve been having a bad year I don’t know but you have been having a miserable bad year whatever it is and you know what you say I’m going to stay out of church.
I’m going to stay away from God’s people. That’s not what you need to do. You need to run to the church. You need to run to Christ. You need to come and know that he does not reject you. You are his child.
He does not look upon you as someone that he hates or wants nothing to do with, but rather he loves you and it’s with loving kindness. He’s made a covenant with you through Christ and he will not give up on you.
And he continues to draw you to himself. And so I don’t want you to come in here upset. I don’t want you to come in here thinking you’re not worthy in the sense that you can’t even come to church anymore.
None of us are worthy, the ground is level at the foot of the cross, praise God, and nobody’s better than any other person at the church, but the point I want to make to you is that if the one place you ought to be is in God’s house, receiving His grace in your life and you ought to continue to seek God in your life so He can do a powerful work in your life.
And when you come to church, you admit, I need God. When you come to church, you admit your weakness. That’s why Jesus asked this question. Jesus didn’t ask this question because He was ignorant of the man’s condition.
Jesus didn’t ask this question because He was not even aware of what this man was thinking, but Jesus already knew. And He asked the question because He wanted the man to come to the grips with His own helplessness.
So, when God asked us questions, He’d never ask a question so that we can somehow inform Him. God already knows everything. Think about it. When God said to Adam, where are you, do you think God in heaven didn’t know where Adam was?
You see, He didn’t ask Adam, where are you, because God didn’t know where Adam was, but He wanted Adam to know where he was. And God wasn’t so much interested in where Adam was physically, and He wasn’t so much interested in Adam knowing where he was physically as much as He wanted Adam to know where he was spiritually.
And there are many questions that come in to you and I from God, that the Holy Spirit of God is asking us questions why they are causing us to come to grips that we need Christ. Christ is our strength.
Christ is our strength for our weaknesses, and the worst thing you can do is to turn away from heaven. Jesus Christ. The second thing I want you to learn, if Jesus is our strength, how is it that we can experience this strength?
Well, we need to, number one, acknowledge our weaknesses, but number two, activate our will. We need to activate our will again. Verse 6, when Jesus saw him lie and knew that he had been now a long time in that case, he saith unto him, Wilt thou be made whole?
For he not only had to acknowledge his weakness, but he had to activate his will. Jesus wanted to know if the man was really willing to change. Have you ever tried to help somebody and come to find out they were okay with being in a mess?
Have you ever tried to reach out to somebody and they were glad to stay in their current circumstance or situation? My friends I have many times and it’s the hardest thing to come to grips with in that what you desire for that person and the transformation that you desire and the change that you desire for their life and that you’re doing everything you can to bring about that change but they are not willing to change.
What I’m trying to say to you is are you willing to change? Have you come to the point where you acknowledge that you are spiritually in a mess and you are willing to come to God and say Lord help me to change.
Now when we think about our salvation we must remember this and I know this is going to be hard for you to digest but I’m going to say it anyways and I want to back it up with scripture so you don’t think Pastor Mike is a heretic okay and I’m going to bring it all into context so stay with me.
We are not saved by our own will yet the human will must be exercised before God saves a soul and before you’re upset about that first John chapter 1 verse 12 through 13 as many as received him to them he gave the right or the authority to become the children of God to those who believe in his name who were born not of blood nor the will of the flesh nor the will of man but of who of God how about that and I know you got a lot of questions take me to lunch this week we’ll work it out.
The scripture says this in Philippians 2 13 I want you to understand this because I’m trying to help you activate your will. Philippians 2 13 for it is God who works in you both to will and to do his good pleasure.
That’s an important truth that you need to know. Theologian Augustine said, thou didest seek us when we sought thee not. Didest seek us indeed that we might seek thee. You see, we’re under the impression that somehow, that if it wasn’t for us, we would never be saved.
But the truth is, it’s God who pursues us. It’s God who reaches out to us. It’s God who puts His hand upon us and begins to convict our soul and begins to bring us to the understanding of the need for salvation in our life.
Jesus said this in John 644, no man can come to me except the Father which has sent me draw him. And I will raise him up at the last day. I want you to get that. No man comes to God. No man comes to Jesus except the Father which has sent me, draw him.
You come to God because you are drawn by God and I will raise him up at the last day. So I want you to know at the beginning of your salvation, God initiates the calling. He initiates the drawing. God brings you to the point of understanding and as you respond to God and receive him as your Lord and Savior, he keeps you all the way to the last day.
He’ll raise you up at the last day. I like how Charles Spurgeon put it. He said, a man is not saved against his will, but he is made willing by the operation of the Holy Ghost, meaning the Holy Spirit.
It is the Spirit of God that works within me. It is the Word of God that works within me. Again, the Scriptures teach us in 1 John 4 .19 that we love him because he first loved us. You see, I did not initiate my salvation.
I did not initiate me coming to God. The truth is, when I think about me coming to Christ, I was just an 11 -year -old boy out there having the time of my life playing baseball, football, basketball, doing whatever I wanted every day of my life until someone came into my life, invited me to church, picked me up on a bus, took me to Sunday school for the first time I heard about Jesus in my entire life.
Never heard about him. And you know what? God convicted me and drew me to him. And I responded to that. And so what I’m saying to you is this, is what this man was experiencing was the work of God in his life.
He was experiencing God drawing him, Jesus drawing him, and so it is in our life that, first of all, when we come to Christ, what we must pray is that God would draw our friends and our family. As we’re trying to reach our family and friends for Christ, we must pray that God would use us to help draw them, that the Spirit of God would work in their heart and that they would be called unto salvation through Christ through the power of His Word and the power of His Spirit.
This is an important part of our prayer and this is an important part of us reaching out, but we also must understand that as a believer that it is the Spirit of God and the Word of God that gives me the strength to activate my will for God.
Again, I take you back to Philippians 2 verse 13, for it is God who works in you. both to will and to do His good pleasure. When you are at that point in your life where you feel like the Apostle Paul did, that the things that I do, I do not understand.
I don’t even understand my own actions. And I do the things that I don’t want to. And I find that I’m doing things that I hate. Here’s what you do. You don’t get a self -help book. You don’t sit there and say, I gotta muster up my own strength and pull myself up by my bootstraps.
I know that’s the American way. And you don’t say, look, I don’t need anybody else. I’m just going to do it myself. Know my friends, you humbly come before God. And you say, God, I need you to activate my will.
Lord, I need you to fulfill this verse in my life. It is God who works in you both to will and to do. God gives you the will. He gives you the desire. He gives you the ability to do his good pleasure.
You wanna do the will of God? You wanna do what God wants you to do? You wanna live your life honoring Christ and overcoming and living in victory? Here is the key that in your prayer time, in your devotion time, Lord, I pray that you will give me a heart of obedience.
I pray, Lord, that you’ll give me a desire to glorify you. I pray, Lord, that you will give me a passion to love you and to make good decisions that honor you and bring glory to your name because my friends left to ourself, we would make a mess of ourselves.
You see, all the self -help books won’t help you. They might get you down the road for a week or two. But after a while, there aren’t enough good habits to keep you going. Ultimately, the only way that I can obey God, the only way I can live for God, the only way that I can serve God effectively.
is through His good work in me and through me. And when you come to that point that you acknowledge your weaknesses every day in your life and you ask God to activate that will, that godly will, that godly desire in your heart that you might be all that you should be for God.
It is at that moment that God will work powerfully in you. Romans 9 16 it is not of Him who wills nor of Him who runs but of God who shows mercy. God shows mercy to the humble. God shows mercy to those who are authentic before Him who will come to Him and say Lord I can’t do this.
I can’t be the wife I should be. I can’t be the husband I should be. I can’t be the parent I should be. I can’t fulfill this role in my life. I can’t fulfill this responsibility in my life unless you, through your spirit and your word, activate my will towards godliness and righteousness in my life.
I know that’s a lot to chew on, but I want you to think about it all throughout this week. My final point that I want to submit unto you is we must initiate our walk. Jesus said unto him, rise, rise, take up thy bed and walk.
There comes a point in all of our lives when we have to move forward from the past. We have to stop the suffering from the past that is holding us back. Some of you cannot move forward and you’ve not been able to initiate your walk for God because you are under the analysis of paralysis, meaning that you are always analyzing.
You’re always thinking about what if. You’re always thinking about how something’s gonna fail and fall apart. Imagine that if this man would have said after Jesus told him to get up and take your bed and walk, if he’d have said, now look, Jesus, we need to think this through a little bit.
And imagine if he would have come up with 100 excuses and imagine that if he would have found ways to blame other people in his life for the reason that he cannot walk. And I’m here to tell you this morning that it is time for many of you to rise up from your past, to rise up from your problems, to rise up from the people that have held you back.
to rise up from the people that have continued to be a stumbling block in your life, and you need to take up your bed, and you need to walk forward in your life for the Lord Jesus Christ. People say to me, Pastor, I don’t want to be here anymore.
I don’t want to be here anymore. Listen to me, friends. God has a plan. I don’t know what God is always doing, but I know this. He left me here for a reason. It’s time to rise up and take up your bed and walk.
You have to accept what God is offering you. He is offering you a miracle in your life, but He will not activate that miracle in your life until by faith and obedience you rise up and walk. You cannot live for 38 years next to a pool and have a pity party.
You cannot be only a few feet away from your healing and remain in your situation that is holding you back. We all can tell a story. We all have something that is a great obstacle in our life. For some of us it’s physical.
For some of us it’s spiritual. For some of us it’s emotional. For some of us it’s mental. But whatever it is, my friends, this day is your day to rise up and take up your bed and walk forward for the Lord Jesus Christ.
Walking demonstrates faith. Walking demonstrates obedience. What I’m trying to tell you is get up. Get up out of your problem and keep moving forward in your life. When our children were little, they would get mad at me because when they would play soccer, basketball, baseball, if they fell down, my first words were get up.
Get up. And you’d say, dad, my leg’s broken. Get up. But we never wanted our kids to stay down. The problem is not that you got knocked down. The problem is you’re staying down. And I know there’s people that have let you down, people that have hurt you, but you can’t stay down.
You got to get up. All I want to encourage you to do is to get up. I want you to experience the power of God in you. I want you to experience His strength in you. And you see, my friends, there is healing when you get up.
get up and walk in faith and obedience to God. When you just get up and do what you need to do every day, it’s not easy, and I know that it’s not always what you feel like doing, but you just gotta get up and do the right thing, because it’s the right thing to do, and as you’re doing the right thing, somehow, some way, God is working in you, he is changing you, and he is healing you, and he is strengthening you.
Now, several of you have gotten your knee replaced, your hip replaced, maybe a few of you even got your brain replaced, I don’t know. But the doctor, I mean, they immediately want you to get up, don’t they?
They want you to get up, get going, get moving, why? Because there is no healing laying in a bed. There is no strength. You want those muscles to work, you gotta exercise them. You gotta get up and you got to move forward.
And listen, sometimes you need to realize that there are many parallels in life to the physical and the spiritual. And this is what God is saying. Some of you’ve got a broken heart. Some of you’ve got a broken life.
Some of you’ve got a broken relationship. You’ve got a broken situation. And you think the answer is simply to close the blinds, lock the door, stay away from people, disengage, and never trust another person in this world.
And I’m here to tell you that’s the opposite of what God wants. And you say, my heart hurts. I know. Step by step, take up your bed, and I want you to walk for Him. I want to leave you with a set of verses before I shut her down.
And all God’s people said, amen, pastor. We got it. We got your message. Ephesians 2, 8, 9, or Ephesians 2, 8, 9, and 10. Go there. Pull your Bible out. Pull out your device. Go there for me. Will you do that?
I want to show you something. I want to show you something because this is the understanding of the Christian life. This is what we do. This is who we are. Thank you. Okay, Ephesians 2, I’m going to begin reading in verse 8, I want everybody to look at it.
You know these verses, but I’m going to add verse 10, maybe you’re not as familiar with, but I want you to see the synopsis of the Christian life. Ephesians 2, 8 through 10, for by grace are you saved.
Through faith and That not of yourselves it is the gift of God not of works Lest any man should boast For we are his workmanship Created in Christ Jesus unto good works Which God has before ordained that we should walk in them There are three key prepositions in these set of verses Circle them highlight them note them The first one is by Look at that in verse 8 for by grace.
Are you saved? It’s the grace of God that saves your soul The second preposition is through Through faith. How does God channel that grace to your heart? How does he apply it to your life through your faith in God?
God Grants you the understanding Your will responds. You activate your will, you respond through faith to Him. And then note that he says in verse 10, the last preposition is unto, for we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works.
You see, initiate your walk. Initiate what you were created to do. Initiate God’s masterpiece plan that He has for you. That’s what that word workmanship means. It means you are in a masterpiece of God, that He is created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God has before ordained, that we should walk in them.
Church, take up your bed and walk in God’s great purpose for you, and you will have great strength in the time of your weakness. Well, we know that every one of us has a weakness, and the hardest thing to do is to acknowledge that, and then to learn, and to grow, and to be able to work in a way that our weaknesses can become strengths in our lives.
But that’s what we learn from Jesus, is that we can get strength from Him for the weaknesses that we have in our life. So I hope that you will remember those important truths that we shared with you today, and that just remember that the primary source of weakness is our own sin, and that we are in this world as sinful and selfish people, but thankfully through the gospel of Jesus Christ, we can be strengthened in the power of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And so take these truths, remember them, and let the Lord work mightily in your heart. Have you been to our website lately, Hopeworthhaving .com? I hope you’ll stop and click and check our website out because now we’re offering all of Dr.
Bill Dykes, who is our Hopeworth having director, all of his music can be downloaded and you can give a donation and they’ll give you an access code and then you’ll be able to download all this good gospel music that honors the Lord and encourages the saints so that we can continue to live for him.
And there are other great features on the website relating to different interviews that we’ve done and some great material and resources that are available to you so you can continue to grow in your faith.
And we know the Lord’s working because we get phone calls, we get letters and people continue to communicate to us and we thank you for reaching out to us because that keeps us encouraged and it keeps us motivated to stay at the task of teaching and preaching the gospel.
of Jesus Christ. So if you’d like to reach out to us, then you can contact us at 600 Miller Street, Chambersburg, Pennsylvania 17201, or you can go to our website and hit the contact button or feel free to give us a call at 717 -264 -3266, extension 120.
This is Pastor Mike Sanders reminding you that in Christ, there is hope worth having. Thanks for watching!