John: Surprising Peace
Pastor Fletcher preaches about Jesus’s healing of the official’s son and the man at the pool of Bethesda from John 4:46-5:17, read for us in Mandarin. Discussion points: Jesus continually subverts and exceeds our expectations of him, Jesus healed each person in an unexpected way with his word, the forgiveness of our sins is even better than whatever earthly blessing we could ask of God.
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Scripture Reader: [Read Bible passage in Mandarin] This is the word of the Lord.
Preacher: Thank you so much. That was beautiful. It's just great to hear the scriptures read in in different languages and be able to celebrate what God is doing in our church in that way. Well, a as we reflect on this and if you didn't catch everything, I'm sure we're gonna walk through it for the next, you know, 40 minutes or so. So it's gonna be ok.
Here's something that you guys probably don't know about me is that I am the absolute worst person on the entire planet to buy a gift for absolute worse. I am just just terrible. I'm a terrible person. I'm not good at receiving gifts. My wife is a great gift giver and I'm not just talking like kind of good. Ok? When I mean great, I mean she is a great gift giver she's generous. She's kind, she's thoughtful, but I cannot tell you how many Christmases I have ruined the moment I received the gift that my mom, that my mom, that my wife, that mom and our family had for me. Because this is what happens. You know, everyone's excited. You know, we're opening the gifts under the Christmas tree. Kennedy wants to sort them all first. So she's organizing them. The kids are all taking turns. We all take turns and we're opening our gifts and then, uh, you know, everybody's so excited, just so much joy and happiness, everybody screaming and excitement. And then we get to me and I open my gift and I'm excited, I'm excited and then I open it and every single time, every year, it doesn't matter how much I psych myself up for. I know I respond like this. I know it. I don't want to be this way. I just am every time I open it and I go, oh, it's kind of expensive. I think I'm taking that back like immediately. That's my immediate thought every single time I'm like, I don't, I don't need this, you know, II I it's ok and it takes roughly, I know exactly how long it takes. It takes roughly one hour for every $50 spent on me, for me to adjust my, my expectations to accept and, and enjoy the gift. So usually by about noon or or so I am like, which, I don't know how much that month, but usually it's about by noon. I'm like, you know what I think I really like it. I, it's nice. Yeah, I think I'm gonna keep it. It's, it's pretty good. Yeah. So that means that my family is walking around for a couple of hours, just like, well, dad hates Christmas.
The best gifts all have some of the same things in common. And one of the things that some of the best gifts that we receive for Christmas have in common is that they subvert and that they exceed our expectations. If you have a gift, that is both a surprise and so much better than what you expected it to be. You will be delighted. And that is the best kind of gift. I'm a real sucker this time of the season for those videos of the, the military people coming home to surprise their spouse on Christmas Day. Oh, man, you can get me crying with one of those. It's just like, oh, the joy, uh, just expectations completely subverted and exceeded on that day. Let me ask you this. When, when you first met Christ, what were you expecting? What did you come into the relationship expecting for many of us? You know, maybe we met Christ as a, as a young child. And so all we were expecting was maybe a get out of free, a get out out of hell, free car for others of us when we met Christ, maybe we were just seeking the truth, we wanted to know what was true. And so we started to investigate the evidences for the resurrection and we actually found them to be quite satisfying. And so maybe that's all we were expecting was the, the truth for others. Maybe we expected him to do something in our life because we had seen the way that he had done things in other people's lives. And for maybe others of us, we were expecting maybe just a little bit more meaning and significance than what our careers or our families were capable of offering.
But friends, this is the thing about Jesus, even if you find all of those things, he continues to subvert and to exceed your expectations. Jesus has never failed to continue to subvert and to exceed my expectations. When I first became a Christian, I was 14 years old and I don't think I really knew what I wanted. I think I just didn't know if I believed in God or not. And then I remember a night it was at a emotional, you know, like church camp thing. And I just remember a night that I stopped doubting that Jesus was real. I stopped doubting that God was real and I trusted him and my life has continued from there. I really didn't have any expectations for God and many of us are coming here and we have no expectations for God. And let me tell you this, it's very difficult for Jesus to subvert and to exceed your expectations. When you have no expectations, we must come to God expect it that he will do something. Now, he's not always going to do what we want him to do, but he always finds a way to subvert and to exceed our expectations.
Today, we're covering two different stories in the gospel of John. They're back to back and they're actually quite similar. When you look at them, they're, they're pretty different and they're pretty similar, but they're two different healings and we're going to walk through the healings one by one and then we will compare and contrast them. So in, in your mind, you can be making some mental notes of different things that you see that might be similar and might be different. Ok. It's kind of like that Sesame Street Game. What, what's the same and what's different? All right. So let's walk through a ch together church, the first healing and, and John chapter four. This is right after Jesus promises the woman at the well, the, the, the water of eternal life, the, the springs of living water. And this is this is actually a great story. My Children have a book called The One O'clock Miracle and this is one of their favorite books, one of my favorite books of theirs. It's actually a great little children's book. If you have kids and you're thinking about something that you could get to read together verse 46 it says this.
So we came again to Canaan in Galilee where he had made the water wine. So Jesus, he's moving around often in the book of John, as we continue through this whole series. And what we find in this area is that he has left where he was previously through Samaria and he's, I made it back to Ka, which is where he committed the first miracle that he, that he did, which is when he turned the water into wine. And so he's back in that same area. And now at Caperna, there was an official whose son was ill. Now this is an official. the word that's being used here would make us think that this is one of Herod's officials. This is one of the king's right hand people. This is somebody that's probably in, in Harrod's cabinet and he is an important man. He's a well off man and his son is you better believe is getting the best medical attention that he can receive in that time and day. And so for this man, his son was very ill still, despite all the attention that he was getting and this man himself, he had servants, but he didn't know what to do at this point. And so verse 47 when this man heard that Jesus had come from Galilee or, excuse me, from Judea to Galilee. He went to him and asked him to come down and heal his son for, he was at the point of death.
Now, you're gonna miss a few things unless you're just an expert in bib biblical archaeology. , but one of the things that you might miss here is that Caponi and Ka are like 25 miles apart. And so it's not like the man just strolled over to Jesus. It wasn't like Jesus was next door. The guy heard that Jesus had gone back to Canaan and he said, that's not very far from here and he proceeded to make his way out to find Jesus. And you better believe that there were times that he was running, this guy ran a marathon, essentially walk, run a marathon, which is the best that I would be able to do. It's still a multi hour journey that he's making and this has to be his last ditch effort. This man, this important man has run out of options for his son. And so he goes to Jesus and he begs him and he says, Jesus, come with me now or my son is going to die. It is important that you come and Jesus says to him, unless you see signs and wonders, you will not believe.
Now the U here in Greek, there's two U's OK. Many languages have this sort of thing. English has it, but only the Southerners know how to use it. Ok? Jesus said, unless y'all see signs and signals and wonders you will not believe. Now, he's not just talking to the official. He's making a general statement about the people in the area. He's saying you guys, you guys won't trust me. I didn't do anything for the Samaritan woman and she trusted me with everything I gave her the, the waters of living water. I gave her the rivers of living water in her heart, the springs of living water. But you guys, you want all the tricks, you want the magic, you want the signs and the wonders the official says to him, sir, come down before my child dies. He's like Jesus, save your speech. I've got a dying kid down here, come with me now. And Jesus said to him, go, your son will live. Well, that's a bit surprising. That's not what he expected at all. He thought that Jesus was going to have to come down to see his son really roll up his sleeves and do his crazy messiah magic on him. And all Jesus has to say is go, your son will live the same God who created the universe with his words, is able to heal with his words. He does not even have to see the official son. He is able to just say go.
And so the man believes Jesus and he heads on his way on his way back home, he sees some people in the distance. He's like, oh, it kind of looks like my servants as he gets closer. They are his servants and they come to him and they say, sir, you're not going to believe that your son is healed. And he said, what time? Tell me what time he, he started getting better and they said it was about the seventh hour, which is about one pm in, in the way that we tell time. And he said, you're never gonna guess it. That's the exact time I was talking to Jesus. And Jesus said, go, your son will be healed. And it says that he believed again, even though he believed previously, it says he believed again, his belief is growing and it's growing.
I can't tell you how many times in my life things like this have happened just this past week. I was praying. I walked over, I felt like the Lord was, was asking me to pray for someone else. And so, and that person was in the room and I went over there and I told him, I was like, I feel like the Lord's asked me to pray for you. And they said, well, you're not gonna believe it. I've been fasting over this thing that, that the Lord's asking you to pray. This type of thing happens all the time when you're close to Jesus, when you have expectations, but he constantly subverts and exceeds our expectations just as he did this man, it says in verse 54.
Now this was the second sign that Jesus did when he had come from Judea to Galilee in the book of John and just explain a little bit about how John works. John is a, a gospel that he wrote and it has a structure to it. The, the author has a plan and what he's going to do in the first half of the book is there's seven signs or wonders of John. John is writing selectively. He's not writing about, he's not writing exhaustively of everything that Jesus did. He wrote that at the end that there is so much more that he could have put into this book. So he's writing selectively and he's chosen seven signs or wonders that Jesus did throughout his ministry. They all point to the coming kingdom of Jesus and they culminate in the resurrection of Lazarus from the the grave. And hopefully, Lord willing will get to that on Easter this year, well planned out this time. And as Jesus went through each one of these signs and the number seven is very symbolic. And in biblical literature, we see that this is representing that he is calm and he is the perfect He has got that that's come to do all these signs and wonders bring in the kingdom. And so I just think it's kind of cool that, that we can track through.
So that's the second sign. The third sign comes right after and it's the next healing that he commits the second healing, which is the third sign of Jesus. Let's continue to look at this. After this, there was a feast of the Jews and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now Jerusalem is actually south of where he was, but he wasn't thinking up and down Jerusalem's on a hill. So he climbs up to Jerusalem. And so Jesus is back in Jerusalem now. And verse two, now there is, there is in Jerusalem by the sheep gate, a pool in Arama called Beth Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades in these lay a multitude of invalids, blind, lame and paralyzed. One man was there who had been an invalid for 38 years. Now, how many of you are reading your Bibles right now? We, we have Bibles open. A few of us have, have Bibles open.
Before I explain, there's a lot going on in this passage before I explain exactly what's happening. I just want to do another Sesame Street thing with us. OK. Verse two, verse three, verse five, the word forgo. Where'd the four go? It's not there. Is it a conspiracy? Did they remove it? What's going on here? Rest easy. There's no conspiracy. But in order for me to explain to you where the four went, I basically have to explain the entire way that the Bible was created so buckle up, it's a bit of a detour but one that I, in my five years, I can't remember a pastor in this church. I can't remember ever explaining. And so, you know, this is a very rough and simple version of what academics call textual criticism. OK. And, or how you got your Bible, I think that through going this, you actually trust your Bible more by looking at this. But I know that there's a tendency when you come to things like this to think it's a conspiracy. And so let me explain to you why it is not the Bible. Every book of the Bible was written by a person under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. That person then sent the book of the Bible to the intended person that they were writing it to. So if it was a letter, they would write it to to churches that got sent to the church when it arrived, whether it's a gospel or a letter, it was copied many, many times so that it could be shared. They wanted many people to be able to see this. So there were a lot of scribes that would take the the words and they would copy them very carefully. Now, we do not have any of the original manuscripts of what was written. We do not, we do not have the handwriting of John as he is writing the Gospel of John but we wouldn't expect her. That does not bother me whatsoever because we wouldn't expect to. We also, you know, what else we don't have? We don't have any of the original manuscripts of Shakespeare. He was way more recent. We have many copies. I think that there might be like one small section of Shakespeare's writing actual writing that we have, but you wouldn't expect it. That's just not the way that they did it. They made many copies and you can depend upon those copies.
If that bothers you, I'll just give you a short illustration. Somewhere in the world once existed the 1st 12 inch ruler and there was a standard made of a 12 inch ruler and maybe somewhere they took it and they had it in, in some Washington DC office with a 12 inch ruler and said this is the ruler that all rulers are to be made on and then we copied it billions of times. There are so many 12 inch rulers in the world. Now, I want you to imagine that there's a great heist one day and someone goes in and they steal the 12 inch ruler that all the rulers are made off of. Well, what are we gonna do? Are we going to forget what 12 inches looks like? No, we have millions of copies that are exact replicas of the one that we have in there. And so that's kind of like what it is when we have this. And actually, as I explain more of this, you're gonna feel like we have a better copy than what you even imagine because what ended up happening over time is that as scribes would, would copy it. Sometimes they would add a little detail here or there. If they knew more of what was going on, sometimes it would be in the, in the in the margins, they would add a little detail and maybe a scribe would get confused or maybe a scribe would like add a letter where they're not supposed to simple mistake, that type of thing.
Anyways, verse four is this verse that talks about what would happen in the pool that there was a, at that time that there was a legend that an angel would come down and stir the water in the pool. And then if the, if an invalid got into the water during that time that they would be healed, it's very reasonable that a scribe might insert this so that you might understand and why a man would lay by a pool for so long for 38 years. And so at some point that got included now in the Sorry, I'm gonna keep on going in the 15 hundreds. There was a man named Erasmus and he took two different Hebrew two different Greek texts from the 12 hundreds. OK. And he turned that into a Greek text that came to be that became the basis for the King James version. And that's where we got the King James version from. And, but that was like in the 15 hundreds, 16 hundreds now, about 100 and 50 years ago, modern archaeology got cranked up. And what do you know? We started finding older versions of the Greek text than what Erasmus had. We found stuff that was hundreds of years older than that. So we've been finding more and more texts and as we find text, we find that they have different streams and that they have different kind of schools that they fall into as we found more text. What text, what we found is that 95% of everything in the New Testament is confirmed accurate by the other text. And the there's only about 5% where there might be a dispute on different things. No major doctrine is ever in the dispute and your Bible almost always includes what the dispute is about in the footnotes. And if you read your footnotes, you will see that it almost never matters. You would be like, oh, well, I don't really care about that and then you would continue reading. That's why you skip the footnotes. Normally, if you get really into this, you can start reading your footnotes and seeing the different versions have different. So the majority of the Bibles that you have today, if you have the ESP the niv the NLT whatever you know, whatever alphabet soup that you might have today. , unless it's the KJV, which stays like, hey, we're only gonna use that, that one. But almost all the other ones use as many as they can. And then there's this whole field of study called textual criticism where you're trying to figure out what's the closest thing to what the original author had to say. There you go. All right, you didn't ask, but I gave it to you anyway. So, OK, back to the passage.
So there's a paralyzed man laying amongst a group of paralyzed and blind people next to a pool. And I just explain what the pool is. The waters were thought to be occasionally medicinal. And so this man had been invalid. He had been paralyzed for 38 years, 38 years of suffering. The royal official was in a moment of crisis, but this man's been suffering for his for the majority of his life. This is not someone who's seeking Jesus out. Instead, he's been chronically suffering. He's probably lost all hope that he could ever be healed. Verse six, when Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time. He said to him, do you want to be healed? What a question? What a question for a man who's been hurt, invalid, unable to walk for 38 years? Do you want to be healed? Well, of course, I want to be healed, but I don't know if that's in the cards for me. What the man might be thinking, how many of us would approach Jesus with this sort of despondency? We don't believe that Jesus can do anything for us. And so why do we even try? Do I even want to be healed? Do I even want Jesus to move in my life? The sick man answered him, sir. I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up and why I'm going and, and while I am going another steps down before me and Jesus said to him, get up, take your bed and walk and at once the man was healed and he took up his bed and he walked, talk about having your expectations subverted and exceeded this man thought that Jesus might be offering to carry him down to the pool. But instead Jesus powerfully heals him with the power of his words.
Now, after that, some of the Jewish leaders see the man walking around with his bed and your bed is, is, is kind of like the size of a mat. Ok? Don't be thinking about like a queen size Casper mattress in here, ok. This is, this is like a, a mat that you a yoga mat that you might do. Ok? I don't know if they practice yoga at that time, but it's, it's just a little mat. So he's carrying his mat and some of the Jewish leaders see him. They say, hey, you're not supposed to be doing that, put that mat down, put that bed down. It's the Sabbath. Don't, you know, we don't carry beds on the Sabbath. And it's like, sorry, I forgot to read first opinions. Uh, 17 today. Uh, that's not a book of the Bible. , they had made all these extra laws about keeping the Sabbath and, and they said, who told you to walk? And he said, look, a man told me to walk, he told me to pick up my mat and to walk. And they said, who was it that healed you? And the guy didn't even know jesus' name. He was like, yes, this guy, he had a beard. He was right here. Where did he go? Jesus king of the world? Also king of the Irish. Goodbye. He said, he leaves without saying goodbye all the time. He's just out of there. My wife would have been good friends with him.
But then sometime later, Jesus runs into the guy at the temple and he says, see you are well, sin no more that nothing worse may happen to you. And Jesus is I now, this can be a little confusing for us. OK? I wanna make sure that this is clear. Jesus is not saying that every occasion of suffering is a result of sin. He says sin no more so that nothing worse may happen to you. But what he is saying is that sometimes suffering is a result of sin, not every occasion, but sometimes when you sin, you do suffer a consequence and sometimes God gives you suffering to wake you up to your sin. So that you would turn to Him in repentance because it is better to turn to God in repentance. It is worse to be sinful than to be continuing in your sin than to be sick. And that's what Jesus is saying. S no more that nothing worse may happen to you. All right.
So let's recap the differences between these two that we have here today. One is a child. The other one is a grown man being healed. One comes to Jesus with an acute illness that he's about to die. The other one has been sick for 38 years. He's not about to die. He's got this chronic thing going on. Uh, the royal official. He sought out Jesus help. He came to Jesus. He said, please, would you help me? The invalid man did not seek Jesus help. He was just lying there minding his own business. The royal official when he came to Jesus, he knew jesus' name. Jesus was a celebrity to him. The man laying by the pool didn't, I didn't even know who Jesus was after he healed him. He was like, well, some guy came by and he healed me. He told me to get up Jesus never sees the child but heals him from 25 miles away. The invalid Jesus walks straight up to him and talks to him, speaks to him, the royal official. He's a poor, important, he's well off. He has servants, the man laying by the pool. He can't even get anyone to serve him by carrying him to the pool in many ways. These two could not be any more different. But at the same time, there are some similarities. For example, Jesus heals both of them in the same kind of way using his words. He merely speaks and he achieves what he came there to do and with both of them, he subverts and exceeds their expectations. The royal official expected Jesus to come and lay hands on his son, but Jesus merely spoke it into being and his son was alive. The man by the pool thought that Jesus was going to help him into the pool so that he might get a piece of healing. But Jesus spoke it and it happened and he was healed. Both of them had expectations that were subverted and exceeded. Jesus is surprising.
I can't tell you how many times that Jesus has subverted and exceeded my expectations. I'll tell you a couple of examples though, I could, I could go on for a long time, but I can give you a couple one when Megan and I first moved to Boston before we had kids. We lived in Brookline's little building. Brook City on a hill. Brookline has this building called the 133. , a few of you have seen it. , it's fine. , but 10 years ago it was less fine and, uh, not a very nice place, uh, to live in many ways. Ok. So we lived there for like two months and then we, you, you guys know how hard it is to find a place to live in Boston. This is not easy. At that point. At this point, we were poor, really poor, like just did not have much money. And we found this one bedroom apartment in Brighton. It was wonderful. It had, it had a pool, like a, like a community pool. We found it for like less than 1500 a month, like amazing. It was 10 years ago. Ok. So we moved in September 1st with all the other crazy people on September 1st. We moved in, our dog amazingly was still alive 10 years ago. Today she barks at someone and like springs her elbow, you know, but she was, she was quite vibrant back then. And so we move into this place and it's great. We love it. We paint every surface in the entire building. Oh, gosh, terrible. And after a couple of weeks of living there, our dog had made so many friends that the owners association, the condo association had joined together to say that we have to move. Yeah, delightful dog. They said that renters that owners can have dogs, but if you're renting a unit, that of an owner that you cannot have a dog. And so our landlord, he was like, look, we could do a few things you could get. you know, you could sign the dog over to me be technically my dog, you get to keep it, it was creative. But, but he said, or I'll let you out of your lease because they're fining me $100 a week right now. Uh, and I can't, I can't, you have a lease, you're good, but I will have to sell the place for something. This is just not, not good for me. So, , how terrible is that you finally find a place that you can afford and then you have to move or get rid of your dog or give your dog away to a random guy. And so we're just searching for a place over and over again. We don't think that we're gonna be able to find anything. We're so stressed out. We get on Craigslist and, uh, that's how you used to find things. I don't know how you do it anymore. I was on Craigslist just surfing through there one day and I came to this listing. No pictures. It just, it said two bedroom and JP in our price range under $1500. I I click on it and it says two bedroom, one office, open layout, delead it, washer and dryer in unit Jacuzzi tub. recently renovated Call Jesus Seriously. It said call Jesus at the end of it. So I was like, and then I called, I was like, hi, may I speak to Jesus? And it was him and I went and met Jesus and we, we checked out the house and it looked like the house from the outside looked like the type of house where you would be murdered. A few of you have seen this There were like four different colors that the house was painted on the outside and not even painted. It was like vinyl siding on top. The middle layer was unpainted. The bottom layer was painted blue. It was just kind of a crazy looking house, but you went in and it was really nice. And as people do in Boston, we gave him, you know, just a sack of cash and and we moved in how much over the next four years we lived in that place and the rent only went up like $25 a year. And it was a place where we saw several people come to know the Lord where we live, a community group. We, we saw we got a chance to baptize at least six or seven people that were in our community group. Some of you were in that community group with us. At that time, we had our, our first two kids while we were living in that home. It was just a gift from the Lord and it would not have worked for us to be in Brighton. Our dog was rolling in vomit anywhere anyways there because the BC students would puke in our front yard. It was just a gift from the Lord. The Lord subverted and exceeded our expectations with that.
Another quick example is how I came here when we first moved to Boston, we expected, well, I really wanted to plan a church, but I was only 26 years old and I didn't think that the Lord had it and, and I just didn't think it was time yet. So I started working at city on a hill in Brooklyn. We are living in JP. We have this vision to start a church in JP. We're praying about starting a church in JP. Constantly praying about what it looks like for us to plant a church. And then what do you know? But another gospel believing Bible believing church whose pastor I like moves into the area, moves into JP. I was crushed. God. What are you doing? I've been dreaming of this for four years. And so I'm praying all the time and we decided to double down in Brookline. So we moved to Brookline. We leave the apartment we love so that we can be in our church community in Brookline. And then like, I kid you not like a few weeks later, Claude, the guy that was pastoring redeemer before we became city on a hill. Two churches merged here together in 2018. He gets lunch with me. He's like, hey, I want you to consider coming over to our church. I'm not sure how long I'll be here. Maybe I'll be here long term. Maybe I won't. But I want us to become a city on a hill and I want you to be pastoring with me.
Well, that totally subverted and exceeded my expectations. And it continued to because I can't imagine a better church to be a part of like this is like, this is the dream. I wouldn't have been living the dream otherwise, but God continues to subvert and exceed those expectations. Jesus really does answer our prayers. He really does hear us. It means that he doesn't always answer our prayers the way that we want him to notice. Neither of those prayers were answered the way that we wanted him to answer them, but he did answer them and we might go to Jesus even if we're sick, seeking healing from the illness and it might not be his will to heal us from the illness. But rest assured Jesus will one day heal all illnesses. Jesus. Each one of his miracles are pointing forward to life in the kingdom to come. He's walking around healing people because He wants you to know that in the Kingdom of God, there are no sick people. The kingdom of God is the fulfillment of every han dream where the sick are healed, the dead are raised where the demons are defeated. There will be wine and bread and living water. The broken are made, new sins are forgiven. We will be with God and it will be good. In the meantime, we know that Jesus has inaugurated the kingdom. We get little tastes of it today. He can answer our prayers a little bit today and we see just a glimpse of the coming kingdom today. But we long for the day when all illnesses, sicknesses will be healed. Well, we'll receive a new body with him in heaven. And in fact, Jesus today can give us something better than the healings.
There's another story in the gospels where Jesus does a healing very similar to these Matthew chapter nine. He finds a, a paralytic laying on a bed and he says to the paralytic, take heart, my son, your s your sins are forgiven and behold. The scribe said to themselves, this man is blaspheming. But Jesus knowing their thoughts said, why do you think evil in your hearts for which is easier to say your sins are forgiven or rise and walk? But that you may know that the son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins. He then said to the paralytic rise, pick up your bed and go home and he rose and went home. And when the crowd saw it, they were afraid and they glorified God who had given such authority to men. And so Jesus says that, hey, I could heal the guy or I can say your sins are forgiven, which is a bigger deal. Your sins are forgiven. But here's the thing in our life is we take that for granted. Of course, my sins are forgiven. I want you to do something else for me, Jesus. I need this bigger thing but friends, your sins are forgiven and that means that you get eternal life with God that starts today, you get the joy of knowing Him and experiencing his presence. It's better than the miracle that you were wanting. He constantly subverts and exceeds our expectations. It is that if he heals you in this life, you just have a few more years really. But if he forgives your sin, you have eternal life forever to look forward to.
In fact, isn't, isn't the Christmas story all about subverting and exceeding expectations? I mean, you see a child born in a barn, you don't think that that child is going places. Ok? That's, that's not what you would think. But Jesus born and laid in a manger of hble beginnings is the king of the world and on the cross, we see our expectations exceeded and, and subverted even more. Would you ever look at a man dying on a cross and think that is the definition of eternal love. Would you ever look at a man tried the way that Jesus was tried with the injustice that occurred to him at his trial and justice sent him to the cross. But in that moment is how the justice of God was satisfied. Would you ever think that the omnipotent powerful God, the one above all would show his power most clearly by a man dying on a wooden apparatus between two criminals. The cross subverts, but it exceeds our expectations. You know, the disciples did not expect Jesus to be crucified. They expected him to be a political king that they could make into a king that they could, that he would have political army and he would take over the, the land again. They'd be with him forever. They, that's what they expected of Jesus. And so the last thing they expected was that he would be crucified and that they would be huddled in hiding a couple of days after his crucifixion trying to figure out what to do next.
And at that moment, Jesus exceeds their expectations. He subst subverts their expectations and he walks in and he says, what's up through the locked door? Jesus appears and he's like, why are you mourning? I told you I'd be resurrected. Did I not Jesus continually subverts and exceeds our expectations. Satan thought he'd won. The religious leaders thought they'd won but Jesus denied everyone in his moment of supposed defeat was actually the moment of victory on the cross. Jesus bore the sin of the world so that he might offer us forgiveness of sins. And so my question for you today is how is Jesus going to subvert and exceed your expectations? You don't know because that's not how it works to be at your expectations, subverted. What do you expect Jesus to do? What are you asking him to do? I encourage you, go to Jesus with bold prayers and let him surprise you. And when he surprises you, bring him the glory, bring him the honor and say, you know what I see what you've done here is magnificent and allow him to bring joy and light and power into your heart and that relationship that we have with him. Let let's trust him in our lives. Let's go to him and prayer and see what he's able to do each week. We, we practice and we celebrate, we practice a, a sacred meal that celebrates the death of Christ on our behalf. And as we take this meal, we're reminded that his body was broken for us and his blood was shed for us. And we do this in remembrance of him. And so if you are a believer here today, we expect we encourage you to come and receive this meal to repent of any sin that is in your heart. Because Jesus tells us not to be taking this in an unworthy fashion. And so any place of your life that you're not willing to give to Jesus, give it to Jesus and then come, receive this meal and say Jesus, you are enough for me. So church let's stand as we prepare to, to sing, praises to, to Jesus and to respond to his word.
Father. Would you move in our hearts and in our lives and help us to see what you are doing and how you are active in our life and help us to, to give you glory when you do things that are not what we expect, but better. And God, we, we see you guiding and leading each of us and we pray that you would be moving in our church that this Christmas season would be a time where our expectations can be exceeded. Jesus. Would you meet us here? Would you exceed our expectations? We don't just want you to move. We don't wanna just see a little bit of you. We want our expectations to be exceeded. Would you move in our lives in Christ's name? We pray. Thank you, Amen.