17th August 2021 // Shane Willard

all right welcome g'day good evening good morning good evening what does he say okay different movie good to have you here just um for those here can you move a little bit to the front that'll be great if you want to you're well socially distanced i can see that good on you we also want to welcome our online crowd those that are watching from home on your couches or in bed somewhere appropriate we we welcome you it's good to have you with us just some practical things there's exits there the emergency gathering point is in the entrance of the towards the parking for those who need to know and then there's losing that sight just behind that light there this is some practical things the team's going to lead us we're going to sing a few songs and recognize the presence of god it's always with us in our midst is that okay yeah okay big nods thanks team [Music] [Music] oh how [Music] oh [Music] [Music] against a rush of grace descending from the source [Music] [Music] i would search and stop nothing you're just not that hard to find [Music] so i will praise you in the [Music] you're the head [Music] is [Music] oh how far beneath your glory does your kindness extend apart from where your feet rest on the sun rises [Music] and woke me up [Music] and i will praise you on the mountain [Music] so i will praise you in the valleys [Music] [Music] my [Music] [Music] [Music] my [Music] my songs [Music] [Music] we call grace a mighty river flowing upwards from a deep but empty grave [Music] i will praise you on the mountain i will praise you and the mountains in my way you'll lose [Music] no less [Music] in the heart [Music] [Music] so all things have passed away your love has stayed the same your constant grace remains the cornerstone things that we thought [Music] again you cause your sun to shine on darkest nights for all that you've done we will pour out our love this will be jesus we love you oh how we love [Music] the orphans now have a home all that was lost has found its place in you [Music] instead you took these rags [Music] jesus we love you oh how we love you [Music] jesus we love you oh how we love you [Music] you are the one [Music] how [Music] poured out [Music] of jesus our affection poured out on the feet of jesus we love you oh how we love you you are the one [Music] jesus we love you oh how we love [Music] jesus we love you oh how we love you you are the one down [Music] [Music] so jesus we thank you that um god you are hoping um jesus that our hearts um just want more of you jesus as simple as that god you know yeah jesus says shane talks now god would our hearts just be ready god and soften for your voice jesus and go would your spirit work tonight jesus is the way that you willed god yeah lord would you just have your way tonight jesus and we would we be ready to receive fellow in your name amen very good take your seats tuesday night welcome it's good to have you here shane you want to join us shane willard i've heard you speak four times and this place is number four and two other times when you weren't aware that i was there but every time he shares something real profound happens in me and i pray and i know that god uses you powerfully and so that's the reason that we're here so come and join us up on stage i think you can take your mask off unless you prefer not to okay all right good evening everybody if you like this likes following extra bottle we're going to start in the book of colossians if not i've made some really easy to follow along the slides thank you the four of you for for doing that that was um that was quite um beautiful what you did up here and so i really uh really appreciate it um as always i do have a small table set up out there if you'd like any of our new resources please come when this is over if you would just go do so quickly because we have to tear it back down and take it with us so in the first five or ten minutes if you just come um out there and grab something that's how we support our missions in the world and our charities and um we have three homes in china that look after children with um mental disabilities two and henyang one in shangsha we also have a rescue in cape town that gets people out of the sex industry off drugs high school educated and job trained so we can try to do our part um in the cape flat so you can uh pick those things up out there all right so my job tonight is to open the bible and of course you all knew that that's that's why we're here and so um i take that very seriously so anytime you do that you want to ask a couple questions one what happened two more importantly what's happening in me right now because of what happened so i want to talk to you about a it might be it might be the most common word that is used in christianity other than jesus or god right so i want to use i want to talk about i want to talk about probably maybe it's definitely in the top five most common used word and i want to make i want to build an imagination around it that hopefully will be profound for you because here's the thing words matter less than how we picture those words functioning words always matter less it doesn't matter what word i say it doesn't really matter what matters is the picture i just created in your head right about how that functions even if i say god well that doesn't really matter what matters is whatever your primary picture of god is and if your primary picture is a single white dude on a throne well that's more zeus right or some giant projection of what we prefer but if our primary image of god is revealed in the crucified cruciform cannotic christ that's a whole another thing same thing if i was to say jesus if we picture like blonde hair blue-eyed english-speaking jesus that creates one image but if we picture more of a middle eastern guy that was standing up for the poor and the afflicted and and choosing to lay his power down to submit his liberty to the higher ethic of love well that makes a whole another different sort of thing so so but there's a way i could say something true that creates a not true imagination about something and so i could i could say something that's obviously true but but the image it creates is not true so if i was to say um jesus is your judge right that's true but i've asked this all over the world and um you know well into 99.9 of people when i say jesus is your judge if i ask them what do they picture they tend to say i picture some version of a heavenly courtroom where jesus is this courtroom official right but the problem with that is is that in hebrew the word judge is not a courtroom official it's somebody anointed by god to set you free right and so and we already knew that there's a there's an entire book in the old testament dedicated to the concept of the judges and so the judges were not uh courtroom officials declaring people guilty or not guilty they were people anointed by god to set people free so the problem with saying jesus is your judge for instance and then we we say come on press and get close to jesus well no one no mentally healthy person wants to be in court no mentally healthy person wants to be in the presence of somebody bringing up everything they did wrong heck we're we're very flawed human beings but most of us are kinder than every night before we go to bed we sit down with someone we love and say let me just list real quickly the things you disappointed me today with right and if somebody did that that relationship wouldn't last very long unless both people were codependent and really really unhealthy but if we were to say hey jesus is your judge and what that means is is that means that he's the one anointed by god to set you free um now you let's let's press into that right that's a whole different image so there's a way to say a certain word but the word matters less than how we picture that word functioning and so tonight the word i want to choose is salvation saved this is a word we hear all the time in christianity like like the salvation has come to you or we could say it this way or sometimes we ask us a question like are they saved are you saved hey do you know you're saying like so we some version of that word gets used all the time and here's the problem that word it's the problem with every word and that is that word doesn't matter what matters is the primary picture that word creates and so for most of us we have one primary image of the word salvation and that is someday i get to go somewhere else right so the idea is is that i'm saved what does that mean well that means that i've been forgiven and so one day i get to go somewhere else so so in some sense salvation has been dumbed down to someday someday like someday no more pain someday no more crying someday the lion and the lamb and yeah let let's embrace that and let's fully affirm that we here at arana hills church of christ we affirm that idea the problem isn't that idea the problem if that is that becomes the only idea and so i want to affirm that idea but i want to spend the entire evening tonight talking about another way to look at salvation so this is colossians if you could bring that first uh slide up for me this is a guy named paul and he's he's trying he's trying to explain the meaning of the cross of jesus christ to people who really they just didn't have any sort of concept of that so here's here he's trying to explain uh basically so so what so he says once you were dead in your sins and in the earnest circumcision of your flesh god has made you alive with christ he he forgave us all our sins having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness which stood against us and condemned us he took it away nailing it to the cross let's just stop and let's think about that just for a second because i want to give that a full 60 seconds of honor and and yes and amen and that is one of the meanings of the cross of jesus christ is that this idea that we owed god something got removed it was it was it's actually more profound than jesus died to fix a problem it's more jesus died to eradicate the idea there is a problem like like there is it's it's it's it's profound in a sense that you have owed god something and now even though you owed god you no longer oh god and so one of the things that that paul says here think about it this way that's in some way you were indebted and now you are no longer indebted and we say yes amen and we embrace that and affirm it it's just not the one i want to talk about tonight i want to talk about the next sentence check this out next slide and having disarmed the powers and authorities he made a public spectacle of them triumphing over them by the cross so for paul there was this element of salvation that was someday someday forgiveness of sins no indebtedness you are perfectly fine with god it's not that they're just it's it's not even really that there was a problem that now it's fixed it's like jesus died to eradicate the idea that god ever felt a different way about you like because everything jesus did at the cross was true since before the foundation of the world so it's not like god was grumpy and then he hurt somebody and now he's fundamentally better mooted it's not it's it's not that it's it's actually something more profound than that it is there is no indebtedness now and they're never god had loved you since before the foundation of the world so there's that one aspect but then there's the second aspect that paul says not only is it someday evidently for paul salvation is here now today that something is oppressing you and god is not happy about that and so he is deciding to take that on which leads me to as far as i know the first mention of the idea of salvation in the whole bible now because this is tuesday night you're in church i feel like i'm under no pressure to be an evangelist right everybody here is a fully divided follower of jesus right so so i'm assuming that the someday legal indebtedness part everybody here is okay with i want to talk about the second one because i think it's more relevant to us tonight and i want to expand the idea of salvation to something maybe even if it's possible even to make it more beautiful than it was before next slide so this is exodus chapter three as far as i know this is the first mention of the idea of of salvation in this sense so the lord said i've indeed seen the misery of my people in egypt and i've heard them crying out because of their slave drivers and i'm concerned about their suffering so i'm going to come down and rescue them right now the word rescue there is the same root word we get the word salvation from you could easily say i've come down to save them i've come down to deliver them i've come down to bring salvation to this situation now in this context salvation has nothing to do with someday and everything to do with somebody somewhere is treating you poorly and i am concerned about your suffering and i am determining to save you from it so this isn't even no let's be clear we embrace the forgiveness of sins the canceling of the legal we embrace all of that but this other side of salvation which i think needs more play time is this isn't about the forgiveness of sins this is i love you just because i love you and somebody somewhere is doing something to make your life in just and hard and suffering and i'm not happy with that so i'm going to save you from that so again in one sense salvation is about someday but in this sense it's about here now today now to understand this i figured i could do something a bit deeper because it's tuesday night this is a ronna hills church of christ right so so let's let's so this is something quickly for the bible nerds amongst you okay so this to understand this we gotta go back to genesis right so aj gave me a pretty good introduction there he said i'm this is a jj's word i'm four for four in in giving him something different and inspiring so four for four is pretty good i'm gonna go for five for five here right so so this is genesis chapter two um first opening sort of uh story of origins in the scripture and it says a river was watering the garden it flowed from eden and from there it separated into four headwaters now the name of the first was called pishon and it winds through the entire land of havela where there's gold and the gold is perfect hmm now there's all these plays on words going on in this story next slide so so let's let's let's break down those words so it says there's a river called pishon and it's winding through the entire land of avila now peshawn is an odd word right um it's it's a uh it's it's a word that you sort of have to see it in its pictures uh to get the nuances in it so every hebrew letter is a picture every hebrew word then is a comic strip the comic strip on pashan is more it's it's something like something has been consumed to nothing but then burst forth with multiplication so so it's like uh there's something and then that something gets eaten down to nothing and then it explodes back with newness right it's that so you could call that um the the best way i could explain it in today's metaphors would be think of an extinct volcano so we thought that volcano was done with activity and suddenly it's rumbling with new life you could call that surprise peshawn is the root word for surprise which by the way is also the root word for resurrection right which in in the early hebrew language there was no word for resurrection why because you don't have words for things you've never seen right there was no words for airplanes for rocket ships for for for for uh penicillin there was no why because they didn't those things didn't exist yet and so for in their experience dead people stay dead and so when there's something called a resurrection they really didn't have a word for that so the earliest word for resurrection was surprise and that sort of makes sense like if i die tonight and you came to my funeral on friday and i showed up here on sunday surprise sort of cuts it right it's like oh right here we go surprise so so you could call the word peshawn surprise you could call it uh resurrection i think the easiest way to see it is hope like like even when it appears something's dead something can bust for like you never know what god might do to your today that fundamentally changes tomorrow that your tomorrow is not a repeat of yesterday because there's surprise and there's resurrection and there's there's hope so we'll call that hope so the writer in genesis says there's a river called hope now the hevilla word's a bit easier that one's really simple it's villa is suffering so here's what the writer of genesis says there's a river called hope and it's winding through the entire land of suffering in other words if you're in the land of suffering there's a river called hope flowing somewhere in it you just got to go find it and that's important right because there's a lot of rivers in the land of suffering there's a river called give up river called sell out a river called start over a river called make matters worse a river call compromise you don't want those rivers you want the river called hope so the writer says hey there's this river called hope and it's whining through the entire land of suffering and then he goes on to say here's how you can know you found the river of hope there's gold and the gold isn't just normal gold it's perfect gold so in other words if you find a river with gold in the riverbed that you you know you you know you have found it now again there's a play on words and this is my four minutes for you bible nerds all right so the word gold just like peshawn has pictures and every hebrew letter is a picture every hebrew word is a comic strip the word gold is an eyeball it's a person harvesting supply so it's a three-letter word first word letter is an eyeball second letter is a guy harvesting supply and the third letter is a house or a house of god so when the ancient hebrew people read the word gold they read behold the one who brings a substance for survival brings it to us in the house of god so there's this play on words there's this river called hope and it's winding through the entire land of suffering because the one who brings a substance for survival is bringing it to us in the house of god but then there's another thing and this just has to do with science i had a scientist in perth i was preaching something like this and he got so moved and he took me to his lab and he did this for me and he tried to explain it but after about two minutes it sounded like right i didn't know what was going on but he was explaining why he said if you take one part of perfect gold and put it in a hundred thousand parts of water all it takes is one billionth of a gram of perfect gold in a hundred thousand parts of water and it creates a colloidal suspension which to him it mattered that i knew that it doesn't dissolve it creates a colloidal suspension evidently those two things are different right and he says if you take one part of gold and put it in a hundred thousand parts of water it'll create a colloidal suspension that turns all the water blood red right and so he did this for me he put it in a vial it looked about like that and so i used to if i knew i was gonna be preaching on this i used to carry it around with me and i'd stand at the door and welcome people i'd say hey welcome good hey you picked a good day come on in and i would just wait a lot of people would say why are you carrying your blood sample around it looks exactly like when the doctor draws blood it looks exactly like a blood table by the way it's how they make stained glass it's how they create a different sort of colors um in it because once you have red evidently you could do a lot of things so i want you to think about this right if the river called hope that's in the land of suffering has perfect gold in the riverbed what color would the what color would the water be it would all be red right so if you put all that together here's what you got next slide there's a river called hope and it's winding through the entire land of suffering because behold the one who brings a substance for survival brings it to us in the house of god through a river of blood the idea is is that when you see water turning red it is not an innocuous thing in jewish imagery when water turns red it means you might be in the land of suffering now but hope is on the way hmm fast forward to egypt i've indeed seen the suffering the misery of my people in egypt and i've heard them crying out because of their slave drivers and i'm concerned about their suffering so i'm gonna come down and rescue them think through your sunday school things right how does god get them out of egypt he gets them out through ten plagues what was the first plague all the water turned to blood yeah to the egyptians that was a curse but to the hebrew people there would have been a buzz in the camp like hey hey all red water all the water's turning red hope flows through suffering hope flows through suffering moses gets them out of egypt and what do they have to walk through the red sea red water hope flows through suffering they get to the base of mount sinai moses disappears with no explanation they don't know if he's ever coming back they don't know if a mountain lion ate them they don't know if god killed him they don't know anything he's up there they start panicking because these tribal people are sort of surrounding them and so they get all the gold and they mash it together and they make a big gold cow moses reappears and he loses the plot and he beats the gold cow into powter and he makes them throw the powder into the water coming out of the rock now hang on if you take the gold and put it in the water what color would the water be red and he makes them drink it for the remission of their sins hope flows through suffering this is true even in creation um i've never given birth nor nor have i ever seen anything like it i've never witnessed i don't have any children i understand it's a daunting thing like it's it's quite a heck of a thing to get to get a life from in here to out there is is is quite a thing and in everything i know about childbirth i learn from tv right which is 100 facts everybody knows that right but here's here's what seems to be wisdom is always in the consensus you can always find one person that says it's not this way or you could always find one doctor that says hey this is my opinion but wisdom is always in the consensus of people and in the consensus of women who have given birth and what they show on tv it's it seems to go like this the woman is about ready to give birth and the first thing that happens is she'll like like oh she'll feel a contraction and then she'll say my water broke and when her water breaks she enters into a time of labor or suffering and so in the labor what two fluids mix together blood and water so then the greatest suffering a woman might ever know out comes a bundle of joy when blood and water mix hope is flowing through suffering and evidently the joy and the hope that the new life brings is so big that it overcomes the sheer suffering that was before it how do i know that because women regularly sign up to have more than one child right nobody's nobody signs up for more than one belt of kidney stones but women regularly say oh no i'll go through that again the joy beats the suffering you know years later there's this guy named jesus and um people are sort of wondering what he's all about you know they i mean like we have our tradition and our experience that informs us right you imagine living through that in real time wondering what's this guy all about what's what's going on with him and one of the things that he does is he shows up at this wedding in cana and he performs his first miracle and if you think through your scriptures what was his first miracle he turned all the water into yeah like what was his point to provide adult beverages for the party no no i mean that could have been part of it but but the bigger thing was is he's talking to a group of people who are under roman oppression and he turns all the water red which was a it was a a usurping sort of subversive sort of in-your-face confrontation to oppression without giving them any overt evidence for treason right this is like genius sort of stuff from this rabbi right remember there's this one time um he's uh he shows up at the feast of tabernacles right and he stands up on the temple steps and says i am the living water at the exact moment that they would have been doing the wine and water ceremony where priests were pouring water and wine into the brazen altar until it overflows and then the wine of the water mixed and went down the temple steps in between the people jesus chooses that moment to say i am the living water in other words the hope that's supposed to flow through suffering that the temple's been promising for years and failed to deliver i am here to save the day hope flows through suffering years later jesus has a really bad day and he ends up on he ends up on a cross right and and if you think through your passion story that's a really bad day and if you think through your passion story they don't want someone hanging around on sabbath right because that would have offended the jews so to make sure no one is hanging around on sabbath because the whole goal of crucifixion in jerusalem was to avoid riots right so you don't want to do things that cause riots and so what they do is they send a soldier over to just make sure everybody's dead and they stick they stick a a spear in jesus side and it says out of his side came a steady flow of two things blood and water what is the author saying think like a hebrew for a second the author's saying at the foot of the cross is not just the canceling of indebtedness it's not just someday it's a steady flow of hope for whatever suffering we're in here now today so in that sense salvation is about someday but it is also clearly about right here right now today it's about finding what is oppressing someone and bringing salvation to their house now once we under am i five for five yet we're doing okay so it once you understand that and you go back and think through your jesus stories you start seeing it everywhere like there's this one time jesus has an encounter with a tax collector who's up a tree and he says hey um come on down i'm gonna eat with you today and the task collector's so moved by the compassion of jesus he says hey here and now i'll give half of what i have to the poor and what does jesus say that's it salvation has come to this house which leads to all kinds of questions like is jesus allowed to do that is jesus allowed to proclaim someone saved because they were generous to the poor and can you be saved by being generous with poor and if you can't get saved by being generous to the poor what in the what on earth is jesus talking about when it comes to proclaiming is jesus playing with this man's soul what is going on here but you got to understand in the first century what was the only way for zacchaeus to be saved temple ritual who's not allowed in the temple tax collectors and so what do you do when your job forbidden entrance to the only place that was offering salvation jesus usurps the entire system of oppression and horror and suffering and injustice and he sees the man's heart change and he says that's it you've moved one millimeter towards me i'm moving the rest of the way towards you salvation has come to your house this is not just about zacchaeuses someday this is about jesus engaging his chaos here now today and doing an in-your-face confrontation to that oppression there's there's another story that's pretty similar just with a different person it says that jesus went by a prostitute's house which leads to all kinds of questions like is jesus allowed to go to houses of prostitutions and and and what was going on at the prostitutes house in the first century that would be called business so jesus is between customers which leads to all kinds of questions like would you would would there be a worse place to ever run into jesus ever you imagine you imagine like jesus is in like jesus is in like the front room right imagine being the guy who just happened to be there just before jesus and like he's like coming out and like [Music] oh jesus hey man i'm just i was just here to use the toilet and and so there's all of there's there's there's all this stuff going on and and it says that the prostitute was so moved by jesus compassion not i'm not even sure what he did except for extend love right and it says that she knelt down and washed his feet with her hair and jesus says that's it all your sins are now forgiven which leads to all kinds of questions like can you get saved by washing his feet with your hair and and for all for all my bald friends i mean that's really impo and so what do you what do you do and what's going on there well what's the only way for that lady to be saved in the first century temple ritual who's not allowed in the temple prostitutes so what does jesus do he circumvents the entire oppressive system of horrible power and he sees that lady's heart change and he says you meet me one millimeter i'm meeting you the rest of the way today your sins are now forgiven to a lady that had no means to have her sins forgiven to have her sins forgiven in that way wasn't in your face so in that sense it wasn't just about someday it was about jesus engaging her here now today identifying what oppresses her and setting her free there's this one chaotic scene where jesus is preaching in a full house and um i can't even picture this actually i i've been to jerusalem and i've been to the house where they think this happened of course they're guessing but honestly it it just i don't care how good of a communicator do you have to be to handle any form of chaos like 10 minutes ago there was an ambulance siren and almost lost the room half the room was like right and so it's very difficult and it says something weird it says a paralyzed guy could not get into the house so his friends took him to a roof cut a hole in the roof and then dropped him down this is chaotic right like if a bird flew in here right now there is nothing i could do to maintain the room imagine if someone repels from the ceiling that would just be unbelievable and so he repels the the paralyzed guy and it says something so confronting it says and jesus saw the faith of his friends and proclaimed his sins forgiven which leads to all kinds of questions like is jesus allowed to do that and can you get saved because someone else is believing for you and if you can't is jesus playing games with this guy and what's going on here we understand that in the first century what was the only way for that man to be saved temple ritual who's not allowed in the temple paralyzed people jesus sees the entire oppressive system holding this man down this man has been beaten half to death by life and jesus sees him and he takes compassion and he says that's it all your sins are now forgiven salvation has come to this house why because jesus isn't just concerned with someday jesus the god revealed in christ is concerned with engaging our chaos here now today and confronting whatever is oppressing us but perhaps the the best story of jesus around this topic was frankly my least favorite story um i've never preached on it ever until fairly recently when i learned some stuff about it i actually i've never heard a pastor preach on it it's one of those things in the jesus stories that we all just sort of hope no one notices right as a matter of fact there's one edition of the niv that at the bottom of john chapter 5 it puts an asterisk and says we're not sure this should be in the bible like it's it's like such it is it is it's a it's very small print but they're like we don't know what to do with the story it's it's frankly an awful story and uh unless you know the history which i'll explain in a second but um it's a story you'll be familiar with though because all of us have cringed at this story hopefully hopefully if you've read the story you had a little thought like oh no and it's a story about a pool called bethesda right and and essentially it's all in john chapter five you can go read it later i will tell it well basically it says just inside the sheep gate in jerusalem um there's a pool called bethesda and occasionally an angel would stir the water of the pool and only one the first person they would get healed and no one else is anybody okay with that like that makes god sound like a lunatic this is what that makes god sound like that god's up in heaven there's not enough problems to deal with so he's like boards he's like i'm so bored give me an angel over here so the angel comes over he says hey you see that water yes sir yes sir now only when i tell you and i mean only when i tell you i want you to go down and stir that water right and this is what we're going to do the first sick person that gets in we're going to heal him completely and no one else is going to get healed and what we'll do is we'll successfully create a race amongst the afflicted because nothing gets my god heart beating like a bunch of crippled people trying to move fast this is going to be awesome and there's like some bookie in heaven going 20 to 180 20 to 180 300 right it just creates this horrible image because remember words matter less matter or less than how we picture those words functioning when i tell that story from john chapter five can you see why you've probably never heard a sermon on it i hated the story you should hate the story because it's frankly terrible right until i went there and this is when i realized that words matter less than how we picture words functioning and understanding the history underneath things is just as important as understanding the words we're reading so i got without boring you um with all the details i got invited to study for an entire week with a top history expert from the university of jerusalem there he teaches the phd level candidates academic ancient near eastern history and he had listened to something i did he rang me and said i'd like to invite you to come speak to my messianic he was a fully devoted follower jesus he said i'd like you to come speak to my messianic kibbutz you know it's my synagogue and i was like great what am i going to say to you like you've forgotten more than i know but anyway i agreed to do it and part of my payment was he he agreed to study with me for three days he said i'll start as early in the morning as you want and we'll go till as late at night as you want that was the deal and i was like wow so um so he he he blew my mind a couple times but by far this was the one that got me now he had a rule if at any point and he told me he said i'm boring he said i don't do tourist tours i do academic tours he said so as long as you're okay with academia we're going to be okay but if you expect me to be real entertaining you know but i'm like no no no let's let's study so here's what happened he said you could stop me any point asked a question i was like no worries so we were walking inside the sheep gate in jerusalem right and the pool of bethesda is exactly where the bible says it is just beside the sheep gate in jerusalem so we come up to this pool and this is exactly what he does he went yeah yeah yeah yeah that's the pool of bethesda and he starts to walk away well i was confused because again words matter less than how we picture where it's functioning when you've read the pool of bethesda story in your life what did you picture like one how big's the pool and two how deep is it so i'll tell you my picture before i went there i pictured the pool of bethesda to be about the size of this room and i pictured it to be about two feet deep like maybe as deep as this stage why because crippled people are trying to jump in right you can't have crippled people jumping in a deep pool that it doesn't work so he says well yeah yeah yeah that's the pool of bethesda i was expecting to see this let me show you a picture of the pool of bethesda this is unbelievable that's the pool of bethesda now i know now now the reason that pictures of such high quality is because i took it myself everybody is trying to get a stranger's hand in the top left corner of their picture i pulled that off all right that's that's that's the guy teaching me when i once i stopped him just to give you some perspective here um that is a hundred meters long 35 meters wide and 40 foot deep uh just for a little bit of context up in the top right corner there is a bridge going across the pool of bethesda and that is a grown man walking across that bridge this is much bigger than even that picture is giving it credit for i got it like it's 100 meters long 35 meters wide 40 foot deep it has a bridge across the pool of bethesda now he told me i could ask questions what was my question i said well hang on um i just wanna make sure i got my story straight is this pool bethesda yep john chapter five yep angel serves the water yep one person then gets healed nobody else does yep how many people died here he said what i'm not following i said well follow me right so you your legs don't work so you're you're sitting by the pool bethesda and somebody else angel's starting the 1r and you're like right and then you jump in to that and you don't realize until you're in the pool that you're number two so dead bro i said how many people died here he looked at me and said you're joking everybody knows this which was a little daunting right because follow my logic right if everybody knows something and i don't know it that literally makes me the dumbest person on earth right in that in in that topic i said he said you're joking everybody knows this so i first i played it off i'm like yeah that's right yeah yeah well won't you let me in on what it is everybody everybody knows and he went you don't know i said oh his name was ari i said ari i don't know i'm so embarrassed that you invited me to study at a phd level and i don't even know something everybody knows but i gotta tell you i don't know and he said oh if you don't know we have to talk about this because if you're thinking what i think you might be thinking that would make god awful i said it is it is he asked me two questions he said number one what religion was ruling jerusalem when jesus walked the earth the answer roman caesar worship there was lots of gods everywhere but everybody was under the authority of caesar as lord he said correct second question he said you didn't think the angel in john chapter 5 was the angel of our god did you i said well it it crossed my mind you know and he said no way he was shocked he said who would ever think that about the god revealed in jesus i said i i don't know mostly kiwis i don't know like like it's mostly the new zealanders i don't i i don't know he goes no man he said bethesda was a pagan place bethesda was the epicenter of the temple of the worship of the greek god of healing serapis so the where i'm standing if you could picture this photo where i'm standing is on the ruins of the temple of therapist all i did was pick up my ipad and take a picture right he said what would happen though is this big pool would regularly overflow and because it's at a higher point in the city the water would flow down into the main city and these are this is it create mud and so the romans said no no you've got to fix your flooding problem so what they did is they created a smaller pool so here's what they did if you could picture this there was a temple for serapis here this was the big front yard for the temple service this big giant beautiful pool and then what they did is they ran tunnels underneath the temple of therapists into a smaller pool there to act as a flood catchment like a flood retardant and so i i took a picture of that all i did was turn around and do this let me show you next picture so this was the this is the this is the pool i was thinking this pool is the pool of bethesda it's uh roughly the size of this room and it is roughly two or three foot deep it was more in line with what i had pictured you could see the little holes in the columns and what they would do is when the big pool got too high they would just pull a lever and move water into the smaller pool now what you think about this if there's two feet of water in the smaller pool and they pull a lever no one else sees and the water goes underneath the temple into the flood catchment what would happen to the water it bubbles and stir so here's what would happen the roman governors said to the priest of therapist let's tell the people that's the angel stirring the water and only the first person in gets healed and everybody else doesn't and so people will pay us a premium to sit the closest to the pool the priest of serapis said well that's fine as long as you understand no one's going to actually get healed so here's what they did the romans used a plant and they would tell the plant when they were going to move the water and so what would happen is when they moved the water by the time everybody looked around the plant was already in the water and he came up out of the water healed which only exacerbated the myth that this was working this was roman and serapis oppression of the poor the afflicted the marginalized and the sick now i can tell the story because jesus comes into this epicenter of oppression of the poor afflicted in six and he does not pick a marginally sick person he picks the sickest dude in the whole place 38 years paralyzed been sitting there 38 years that's a long time and and if you remove the jesus goggles jesus is sarcastic jesus is like hey man what's the matter the water's not working for you and the 38 year old paralyzed guy goes what are you talking about rabbi you know the rules only the first one in gets healed no one else and that jerk with a sore throat he keeps jumping in for anybody else and i've been here 38 years and nobody takes a number i can't get in because my legs don't work and then jesus without the help of stirred water heals the man essentially an in-your-face comforter you can all sit here and be tricked and taken advantage of for the rest of your life or you can understand that the god revealed in jesus does not charge people for healing this was an in you you could get killed for doing stuff like this confront confronting oppression at that level so the historian got done telling me the story i just told you to which i asked him a follow-up question everybody knows this where'd you read that he said shane i'm in my 60s i've never lived outside of jerusalem he said this is the first time in my life i've ever considered someone didn't know that he said it's so obvious i didn't even i don't even include it on my tours i'm like bro you should first of all you probably should start including that one on the tour i said but seriously like like where'd you learn he said shane just look around and once he started pointing it out there was like statues of therapists that were broken apart it was those ruins of this and so i see this picture where see where that that shadow is at the bottom of that picture where it comes up see how there's a yellow uh there's a yellow plaque there we can't read it uh so i blew it up for you check this out next slide it it says temple of serapis it's on a plaque in the middle of the pool everybody knows this it gets worse next to the plaque was a billboard the billboard was the size of that wall let me show you the billboard next slide so see at the top of the billboard it says bethesda i had to cut the b off so i could fit it all in it says bethesda and then right next to that it says john chapter 5 right it's actually the billboard references the new testament scripture and then right there where his head is again people everywhere trying to get stranger's hair in their i did it right he's t what does that say where it says pool of bethesda it says pagan medicinal bath pagan medicinal bass it's on a plaque next to a billboard next to the pool everybody knows this he asked me he said shane do you know how many pastors a year look at that billboard i said i don't know ten thousand he said exactly he said how did they never see that it set pagan medicinal baths and i said i don't know he said i guess if you start with your conclusion you'll find what you're looking for whether it's right there in front of you or not i said i agree which leads me to this question if we were wrong about bethesda maybe we should open more conversations about god instead of shutting them down maybe there's a whole lot more to learn bethesda was an in-your-face confrontation to oppression it wasn't just about someday it's about god not being happy with that chaos that oppression that injustice right there and we're going to bring salvation to it here now today so great sermons are not meant to be agreed with nor disagreed with they're meant to be wrestled with so let's ask a few questions next slide what is driving you that you need deliverance from not someday but now what is the name of the slave driver that reminds you i'm in charge before you go to bed at night you about is it worry anxiety anger depression is it fear of being broke what whatever is it is it an irrational fear for your health what what is that thing that just reminds you you are less than human what is the thing causing suffering what's that person's name what's that thing's name this is about that what what are we doing to help free others from their slavery like where are we participating in helping other people be set free this is this is the problem with when our evangelism strategy is just get people to say one prayer once so that they can go to heaven when they die but then we leave them destitute or broke or in bondage what is that salvation is about someday but it's also about here now today let's say this way next slide where do you need salvation for your house today not someday here now today so bless you my brothers and sisters of arana hills may we not just see salvation as someday may we embrace that but may we also see it as an opportunity for the god revealed in christ to engage in broken stories in order to make a better narrative here now today i bless you to know that water is in fact turning red there is if you're in the land of suffering there's a river called hope flow and somewhere in it you just got to go find it and if we're supposed to be the body of christ in our world part of being christ in our world is finding oppression and making sure that we confront it here now today may we not just have salvation as the great prophet isaiah said it is but a light thing to have salvation but i have called you to be my salvation to the ends of the earth may we not just have salvation for us one day may we be salvation here now today i hope jesus got bigger the cross worked better the resurrection is central and scriptures got bigger not smaller i hope that you're inspired by tonight and know that there was no better way to spend an hour of your night than to learn what we lit what we did tonight as we opened up scripture and we open up the god revealed in jesus because christians are not called to believe in jesus they're called to see the world how jesus saw the world they're called to see god how jesus saw god and they're called to apply scripture how jesus supplied scripture that jesus isn't somebody simply to be believed in jesus is someone to fundamentally shape the way we see all things may we be those people grace and peace everybody [Applause] so good we're going to pray leanne brought me back a book i borrowed to her entity right surprised by hope so anyway i'll re-read that again um let's pray for each other when we finish off our evening father is thank you for good news that you are shared with us here tonight through shane and again it's not about escaping earth or going somewhere different but lord it's about embodying that good news here in the present inside our own grief and our own struggle but also into the lives of others around us this is real stuff that makes a real difference i pray for people sitting here tonight that have absorbed some of what's been said but of making room for the spirit to bring healing here to bring restoration here not tomorrow now even for people online at this moment god you're alive and worshipper dead god so we all individually we submit those things in this moment to you so here you are if it means that you stretch out your hand if you means that you visualize that thing that you are able to call out tonight may you do that now it's an invitation for you to do so thank you holy spirit amen amen very good can you hear the clocks at the back it's almost like they're in sync anyway thank you for coming we love shane's work and what he does and we always support it and i want to ask you to do so tonight and if you're able uh in on the screen there there's some details you can give online just market shane will not if you've come with cash you can drop it in the box i think they're taking fbos as well at the info desk if you want to buy some of the products but may we bless them it's a covered season for a man that's traveling around some of the borders are closed so i just want to ask you to be generous in your spirit bless you have a great night thanks for coming you

Channel: Arana Hills Church of Christ

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Id: IWiqbld0yXs

Length: 64min 30sec (3870 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 17 2021