I’ve talked about Steve and Alberta Kelly’s dogs before. They’re not just regular dogs. These dogs are hardship cases. Every one of them has a story - one nearly died of exposure as a puppy; one has been shot with a shotgun; one, hit by a car. The vet fixes them up, and they adopt them. Funny thing about all these dogs: They all live together, but they don’t fight. As a group they're kind of laid back, easy-going bunch - just kind of glad to be alive! They have a perspective on life that many dogs don't have. Now, they view the world through the eyes of hard-up critters who have received human kindness.
Have you ever thought about the way people see things? For instance, everyone tilt you heads back and look straight up for a few seconds. Have you ever considered how everything looks to a baby? This week, a pair of parents said their 7 month old only gets to see where he’s been, never where he’s going. A baby’s view must be very boring. When he’s resting, where does he look? Straight up. So lights are those things that make it impossible to see anything else. Grownups exist only from the waist up. Rooms are familiar because of their ceiling tiles and light fixtures.
Then one day, they sit up, they look down, and they discover that there’s a whole other world below 3 feet. And they’d better get used to it, because until they start school, everything is going to be that tall. When you’re 2½ feet tall, your whole world is pretty short. Now grownups exist only from the waist down. For a toddler, everything that looks interesting or like it might taste good is just inches out of reach. That’s why they learn to climb.
Many of you might not go to sleep tonight if you looked too long at a close-up of a dust mite. Most everyone has thousands of these little beauties living in their mattresses. They’re just too small to see. Thing is, the perspective of a microscope makes us think about them a little differently!
Ever since the attack by terrorists 19 days ago, perspectives have changed. More people are realizing how precious life is. More people want to be around their family members. People are being careful to say, “I love you” when they leave each other. Right and wrong seems a little clearer to some. People who haven’t prayed for years are praying and looking up to God for help. As a nation, our perspective has changed on a lot of things, suddenly.
I used to see life through the eyes of a single person. Now that's changed. I used to judge other people's parenting through the eyes of a person with no children. Not anymore. Experiences in life can help you see life differently. The experience of accepting Jesus does that too; at least, it's supposed to. It's supposed to change the way we look at life:
(1 Cor 3:3-4) "You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men? For when one says, "I follow Paul," and another, "I follow Apollos," are you not mere men?"
We're not supposed to be "mere men." That’s not “mermen” – it means Christians aren't supposed to be “just like everyone else,” because we have Someone inside of us, in charge of us, Who affects the way we look at life. And Who is that Someone? (JESUS)
One reason Jesus deserves to be in charge of our lives, besides the fact that He’s the Son of God, is that Jesus has seen the world from every angle. First, it was all created through Him. He saw it before it was shaped. He formed it and fashioned it. He invented the aardvark and the kiwi and the duckbilled platypus – maybe He laughed as He did those. But then, he did something an artist usually doesn’t do: He stepped inside of His artwork. He came and lived on earth and looked at it all through the eyes of first a baby, then a child, then a man. And now, Jesus is looking at earth again, from the perspective of heaven, watching how we’re doing at carrying on His work.
Jesus has looked at earth from every possible angle. You know what? This morning, I want to see the world through "Jesus eyes." I want to see things from His perspective. I want to think about them the way He does. I want to see earth and its people with the wisdom of the Creator. Jesus has a better view than we do. He looks at the tough things in life with the best view - an eternal perspective - a point of view we can gain this morning if we'll look closely into Jn 5.
Jesus was under attack more than once at this point in His ministry for things that He did on the Sabbath. Each time, He had something to say about the wrong way people were looking at the Sabbath. And in Matthew 12:8 He just flat out said, “The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.” The fact is, Jesus is Lord of everything, and I want to see things through His eyes.
(I. Jesus is Lord Over Human Sickness)
I want to Look at Human Sickness through Jesus Eyes
(John 5:1-9a) Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for a feast of the Jews. 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. Here a great number of disabled people used to lie--the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. 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?" "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." Then Jesus said to him, "Get up! Pick up your mat and walk." At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.
Here we are at Pool Bethesda ("house of mercy"). Local legend says it’s a place of mystical healing. People would gather there and wait for the water to stir around. They believed that the first one in when it happened would be healed. Apparently, someone who was copying this book in the 5th cent. tried to explain all this by saying an angel was responsible and added v4 to the Bible. It may have been a local legend. It’s hard to picture God doing such a thing: “Last one in’s a rotten egg! In fact, unless you’re first, too bad! Ha!” Whatever caused the stirring of the water - whether it was a natural spring or something else, people gathered there in the hopes of being healed. This day, Jesus is there. He singles out this man, who for 38 years has been an invalid. No wonder he can’t beat everyone else into the water – he can’t really move! V.8 - Instant healing. Jesus isn't hindered by human sickness. Jesus is Lord over that situation.
I have to wonder how Jesus felt as He walked through a city and looked at the crowds as a Creator visiting His own, creation now messed up by sin... Can you feel what He must have felt to have made everything perfect, and then see it spoiled? What it was like for Jesus to look at crippled children, blind men begging for a meal, widows struggling to get by, lepers cast out from their society? Imagine what it was like for Him to pass by a cemetery and hear the wails of a grieving family and be reminded of His enemy. Yet....
Jesus knows that those people can be healed; knows that the tombs will someday be opened; knows that there’s something worse than physical bodies getting sick and dying.
This man's physical ailment of 38 years isn't nearly as bad as what sin can do to him. Jesus finds him later and tells him, *v14 stop sinning, or something worse will happen. I think He's talking about what ultimately happens because of sin - spiritual death. Jesus saw his greatest need.
You see, that was his greatest need. And Jesus looks upon a whole group of sick people around the pool of Bethesda, singles one out, and heals him. There was more to it than just a man being physically healed from a bodily sickness. Jesus wants everyone spiritually healed of their sin-sickness. Jesus is Lord of that too!
So when it comes to human sickness, I want to have Jesus eyes: eyes able to see that physical suffering, even death, isn't out of God's control; so that I'm able to pray in faith for healing and wholeness. I also want eyes that see that whatever we experience physically isn't nearly as vital as what we are spiritually. I’ve known some pretty physically strong people who were spiritual whimps. And some of the physically weakest people I've known were also spiritual giants.
Think about this the next time you’re in a group going over prayer concerns. What kinds of needs are we lifting before the Father? Are we praying with the viewpoint that Jesus wants us to have? Are we really asking for the best when we pray for a person to be physically healed, but then fail to pray for his soul? We need to offer some "Hallmark" prayers (care enough to give the best). We need to care enough to pray for the best for people, and that involves more than just physical healing. I want to look at sickness through Jesus eyes.
II. Jesus is Lord Over Man-Made Rules
I want to see man-made rules through Jesus eyes.
(John 5:9-17) The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, and so the Jews said to the man who had been healed, "It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat." But he replied, "The man who made me well said to me, 'Pick up your mat and walk.'" So they asked him, "Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?" The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there. 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." The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jews persecuted him. Jesus said to them, "My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working."
This is a story about a healing, but remember, when Jesus heals diseases it isn't just for the sake of healing. There were a whole bunch of other people there that day that Jesus apparently didn’t heal. Jesus was after a bigger fish.
Over the centuries, the Jewish rabbis had taken God’s Law and analyzed it and interpreted it and delineated it and expanded it and made it into something it was never intended to be. It’s not a whole lot different from what US Supreme Court justices have done with Constitution for the last 40 yrs! The phrase “separation of Church and State” isn’t even in the Constitution.
Neither were the Jewish teachings about the Sabbath!
God had simply said the Sabbath was a day to rest and for worship. It was to be kept. No work was to be done on that day. The trick was, what counts as "work"?
Ill - Some people call getting up real early, sitting in a tree stand for hours, tracking down an animal, and carrying it out after you shoot it “work.” Other people call it “hunting.”
So the Jewish Rabbis had thoughtfully listed 39 different items that counted as “work” that couldn't be done on the Sabbath.
• Plowing was work, and under this were more specific works, like digging.
• “Carrying a burden” was work, and that meant that you couldn’t wear false teeth, because you’d carry them whenever you walked around!
• Reaping was against the Sabbath, so the rabbis said that made it wrong to pluck a gray hair from your head.
• 2 letters of the alphabet couldn't be written together.
• It was unlawful to eat an egg, after all, the hen had to work to lay it! But if the hen that laid it was intended for the table, the egg could be eaten.
• The total distance a person could walk on the Sabbath was about 1000 yards.
• There were rules about what kinds of knots could be tied or untied.
• Starting or putting out a fire was breaking the rules, even in the case of emergency or sickness.
39 general items that were no-no's, and item #39: "Don't carry a palette around."
Listen, Jesus knew it was the Sabbath! He knew it would get the goat of the Pharisees. And by healing this crippled-up man and sending him on his way carrying his palette, Jesus was saying to those hypocritical religious leaders, "You guys and your sorry man-made rules – the ones that you've used to replace the true Law of God – you have to go." My Father is always at work, always doing good, whether it's the Sabbath or not, and good is what I'm doing."
Ill - Have you ever been on your way to church – maybe you’re running late, or maybe you’re supposed to be a greeter or teach or something – and you come upon someone with a flat tire or out of gas? What do you say to yourself? “Yea, I know, but I’m on my way to teach Sunday School! Someone else will get it!” It’s easy, isn’t it, to use things that God meant for good and make them into a way to miss the whole point?
We can take something as beautiful as the Lord's Supper and make traditions more important than what God intended to matter – things like who will serve, during what part of the services will we observe it, who may partake, should there be music during it. Churches have even split over whether there should be one cup or many! We let what should be one of the things that unites the Church become a point of division. And Jesus warned, You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions!
We can take something wonderful like music and make our traditions more important than what God wants for His Church. -- We make new songs versus old an issue, whether we'll sing out of books or off the wall, what instruments are right to use for worship, how much we should sing, whether we should stand or sit while we sing – I applaud this church family, because I don’t hear or see much of that problem. But the Churches of Christ, who called people to put aside the things that divide, divided in an argument over whether or not it’s OK to have instruments in worship. And Jesus warns, You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions!
We can take something like Sunday School - a good tradition of our Church that's there to help us learn from God’s word - and some Churches have even split over whether or not there should be such a thing as SS. Or we permit it to become a stadium for pride and jealousy. All the while our Lord probably shakes His head in disbelief that His people can't simply take this as another tool and use it to strengthen the troops and reach lost people. And Jesus warns, You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions!
Is Jesus Lord of these things or not? I want to look at these through Jesus eyes. I want to regard them the way He does. I want to make sure that I don't allow the traditions and rules we’ve created to override the plan that God has for our individual lives and for His Church.
III. Jesus is Lord Beyond Human Opposition
By this time in John’s gospel, "the Jews" is a kind of code-phrase John uses for Jesus’ enemies. It’s mostly the Jewish religious leaders. They’re the ones who ultimately are going to get Him to the cross. v16 – “they persecuted Him” - that is, they tried to cause Him trouble, because He was a threat to their control. They had a lot of power being the religious know-it-alls of their time, and they weren’t about to give that up.
But then in v18 it’s stronger:
(John 5:18) For this reason the Jews tried all the harder to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.
Jesus wouldn’t be having so much trouble with these guys if He would just quit claiming to be Lord of everything! That claim of Lordship is the main reason they have a problem with Him. You know what? It’s the main reason people resist Jesus today too. Jesus does claim to be equal with God. Jesus does demand that we recognize His right to tell us what to do. Jesus does say things like “No man comes to the Father except by Me.”
So in the face of opposition, threats, intimidation and slander does Jesus back down? Does He quit? Does He teach just in secret now? Hardly. Jesus has a certain outlook on human opposition. I want to have Jesus eyes when it comes to that too.
Just like a dog that bites the hand that feeds it, our culture has turned itself against its Christian beginnings. We’re finally, as a nation, beginning to question the wisdom of that. Good for us!
Ill – One local school marquee had “God bless America” on it, until an administration official said that God had better come off of it. So, for the rest of the day, it said, “Bless America.” This was the same day our President called the nation to prayer and even led in a prayer service at the National Cathedral! The next morning, someone (and it wasn’t me!) had taped, in black letters, “God” at the top of the marquee! They went ahead and changed it back to “God Bless America” like the other eleventeen hundred places in Joplin that say it!
-Ill - I had to laugh when we lived in Hillsboro, OH. No one enjoyed being on the school board. Everyone on it was in for a lot of complaints and slander. At one point, when 3 out of 5 people on it were members of HCC there were complaints from certain corners of the Hillsboro community that the church had so many people on the school board. Can you imagine? The Church was guilty of trying to influence the children of their community! Horrors!
By the way, remember several months ago when I said that as we engage in simple acts of service to demonstrate God’s love in our community to watch the Joplin Globe front page? Some of you laughed. Well, I didn’t expect it quite this soon, but, did you see Thursday’s globe? Thanks, Fernando, not just for giving blood, but also for being VHCC’s first blood donation poster guy!
We had a bunch of people out at Northpark Mall yesterday just passing out cookies and information about our church. The goal was to let people know we’re here and that God loves them. Now, when VHCC launches into Joplin with a front against the devil, will there be opposition? There always has been in Church history. In fact, those times in the history of the Church when it experienced some of its greatest growth were the times when it underwent its worst opposition.
Now, if we keep it up, and we keep making an impact on our community and we keep impressing upon them that Jesus loves them and wants them, you can count on the devil not liking that. We might even run into some resistance along the way.
What should we do? Back down? Quit? Or do we look at it through the eyes of the One Who’s in charge?
(Hebrews 12:3-4) Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. Ha! Hardly!
-I want to look at these things with Jesus eyes. I want to see them the way He does. We don't have to become militant and ugly. Jesus saw beyond the few who stirred up trouble and saw, more importantly, the many who were ready and willing to hear the good news, and He reached them. Human resistance doesn't discourage the servant who sees the world through Jesus eyes.
(I John 4:4) "You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world."
There’s another way to say that: Jesus is Lord of everything.
Conclusion:
Eugene Cernan, one of the astronauts who enjoyed the adventure of walking on the moon, said with wonder, "Our world appears big and beautiful, all blue and white! You can see from the Antarctic to the North Pole. The earth looks so perfect. There are no strings to hold it up; there is no fulcrum upon which it rests." Blasting past the earth's atmosphere allowed him to see the world in a different way. He said he felt like he was seeing earth from God's perspective when it was created.
If you want to see the world from an ant's perspective, get down in the dirt and crawl with the ants.
If you want to see the world from a fish's perspective, jump in the lake and swim.
If you want to see the world from a merely human perspective, just be like the crowd.
But if you want to see life through the eyes of Jesus, you need to come to Him and know Him.
I want to see the world through Jesus eyes - a view that isn't overwhelmed by human weakness, a view that isn't intimidated by man-made rules; a view that isn’t tainted or squelched by opposition.
It's a perspective that makes this world and its stuff seem rather small and insignificant. Life’s that way when you’re looking at it with the eyes of the One Who’s Lord of all.
