October 19, 2025 • 43 mins
This sermon is for someone who has been hearing the same lies from the enemy for so long that you’ve started to believe them. But you are not your issue. You are not your bad decision. It’s time to interrupt your story with truth and leave the lies behind, because the Word says otherwise.
If you’ve just made a decision for Christ, please respond HERE: http://ele.vc/tIepfr
Scripture References:
John 5, verses 1-11
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey, this is Stephen Ferdick.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
I'm the pastor of Elevation Church and this is our podcast.
I wanted to thank you for joining us today.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hope this inspires you. Hope it builds your faith.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hope it gives your perspective to see God is moving.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
In your life.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Enjoy the message.
Speaker 4 (00:18):
But if you've been redeemed and you know it. If
he dacked you out of the pit, then you know it.
Speaker 5 (00:26):
If He brought you this farm, then you know it.
Sank Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.
Speaker 6 (00:41):
Thank you.
Speaker 5 (00:45):
We can sing it all day, we will sing it
all night, but we gotta stup cause it breathes it time.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
The Word of the Lord is coming your way, whether
you're in this room or whether you're watching this later,
whether you're listening in a car. I hope you're not
watching in a car unless you're a passenger.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Just listen and watch the road.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
The Lord has something he wants to show you today
in his word. This is the final message in the
greatest series in the history of our church.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Y'all don't like it.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
My favorite series in the history of our church, because
it's the one that I needed the most. Because it's
called same lies, new loops, same lies, new loops. And
the Lord is giving you some new ways of thinking,
some new ways of being, some new ways of talking,
(01:55):
some new ways of seeing, new loops. It's going to
be a maze today because we're going to see a
picture of somebody who had believed a lie for so
long that to him.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
It was true.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
And when you have believed a lie long enough, is
true to you even though everybody else can see that
it's not. Today, God wants to show you something about
the way that he sees you. Go ahead and put
your name in the comments. And since you can't do
that live, tell the person next to you your name.
Tell them your full name, the one on your driver's license. Gohead,
(02:30):
give me your name real quick. Give me your driver's
license name. We're going to be spending a few moments today.
Well that's a long name. I didn't say your eye
color and your height. I didn't say tell them about
your DUI either. Leave that part out. But we're going
(02:54):
to be spending some time today together. In John chapter
five remains standing, if you're able for the reading of
God's word, And as I share this with you today,
the Lord wants to give us a picture.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
Of what it means.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
To leave the lies behind. To leave the lies behind,
that's what we come to church for. Right we want
to come to church and hear truth and just take
lies home with us like we didn't hear the truth.
We want to come to church, receive the truth of
God's word, and take it forward into the world that
He's called us to change. John chapter five, verse one.
(03:33):
I may just read all sixteen verses. I wasn't going
to stop around verse six seven, but I thought I
would go on down and read the whole thing. Now,
y'all listen, what's wrong with y'all? John chapter five, verse one.
Sometime later Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of
(03:53):
the Jewish festivals. Now there is in Jerusalem, near the
sheep Gate a pool which in Aramaic is called Bethesda.
That word means house of mercy. It's like Bethlehem means
house of bread. Bethe is house. And then sata from
has said the word that means covenant, love or favor,
or grace or mercy. It means all of those things.
(04:14):
It's the house of mercy. At least that's what is called.
It's supposed to be a place where people can come
and get grace. But it isn't, and you'll see that
in the passage. It's called Bethesda, and it's surrounded by
five covered colonnades. And incidentally, since we're in John five,
(04:35):
five in the Bible is often symbolic of grace.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
It's the number of grace. So this is supposed to
be a place.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
Of grace, you know, can I say that about our church?
This is supposed to be a place of grace where
anybody can come like they are and not leave that way.
It was surrounded by five covered colonnades, and here are
a great number of disabled people used to li the
blind the lane. The paralyzed one who was there had
(05:05):
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.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Do you want to get well? Sir?
Speaker 3 (05:20):
The invalid reply, I have no one to help me
into the pool.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
When the water is stirred.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
While I am trying to get in, someone else goes
down ahead of me.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Then Jesus said to him, get up, pick.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
Up your mat and walk at Once the man was cure.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
He picked up his map and walked. But that's not
the end of the verse.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Is it. The day on which this took place was
a sabbath. And so the Jewish leader said to the
man who had been healed, it is the.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Sabbath the law forbids you to carry your mat. But
he replied, well, I love this Bible verse right here.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
The man who made me well said to me, I
hear what you're saying to me. But the one who
walked by me and told me I could walk to
told me to do this. The man who made me
well said to me, pick up your mat and walk.
(06:34):
I got good news for you today. Church. The title
of my messages the word says otherwise. The word says otherwise.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Tell your neighbor.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
I know you feel kind of depressed. I know it
looks like it's over. But the word says otherwise. Put
it in all caps in the chat, put it in
your language, put it in your native tongue, put it
in a mulojis.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
I don't care. The word says otherwise. And we're gonna
give this message a subtitle. Also, we're gonna call it hmm.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
See if I can explain this, your label is lying.
Your label is lying. You know how that thing said
it was it was a healthy food.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Your label is lying.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
You know how that guy said he was a Christian guy.
You're labeled, and he wore a Christian shirt.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
You're label is lying.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
You know how people say when you come to Christ,
everything will just be better all at once. Your label
is lying. But God's word is true. Father, Thank you
for your word. In Jesus name, Amen be seated. Your
label is lying. I'll share by way of anecdote what
(08:10):
I mean by this statement, but first write the statement down.
Don't label it until later. Don't label it until later.
Now you're gonna write that down. You don't even know
what I mean by that, but you will later. I
(08:32):
was in a songwriting session recently and we were just
starting to work on a song. We had really not
identified the tempo of the song, the time signature of
the song, or even the theme of the song. I
didn't know yet whether it wanted to be a ballad
or a bop. Sometimes you don't know. Sometimes a song.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
Starts like really really worshipful.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
And the next thing you know, you're dancing on a
table and you don't know what happened. So the key
to this is to be patient. Be patient, let the
song tell you what it wants to be. Let the
spirit of God have his way. If you're writing a
worship song and we were just starting to write a
(09:12):
song and the producer who was recording the session and
needed to save the song on his computer, stopped and
asked a question.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
He said, what is this song called?
Speaker 3 (09:24):
Well? I look back at him, and I knew that
he needed to save the file so he could access
it and be organized. But I looked at him and said,
I can't name it. We haven't even made it yet.
We need to make it before we name it. If
we name it before we make it, there may be
(09:45):
something else that the song wants to be that we
don't allow it to become because we already gave it
a name. So what we need to do is just
save the file as a work in progress, and then
we can see what is going on to be by
the end of the day, because we'll label it later.
(10:06):
We'll make it now and label it later. I'll know
who this is for. But maybe that's the word that
you came to get today. Make it now and name
it later. We're so specific in our time about trying
to diagnose everything. Even every child is diagnosed with all
of these conditions before they are seven years old, and
(10:29):
sometimes that can be helpful, but other times it can
be a hurdle because.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
If I give a child a label.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
Before that child has even had the chance to develop
beyond those developmental limitations, I may limit what the child
thinks that the child can be because I gave the
child a label too soon that limited their potential mentally,
even though their potential in God was unlimited.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
Label it later.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
And I'm not talking about not going to doctors and specialists,
you understand.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
I'm using this.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
As a way to get you to see that sometimes
you are trying to label your life as you are
living your life, and it is causing you to misdiagnose
some of the things about you that only God can
reveal in time.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
It is causing you.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
To name things and save things to the hard drive
of your mind, and you call yourself things, and you
call situations things that they really aren't because you are
trying to label.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
It before you have even lived it.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
So you say things like this is the worst season
of my life. How do you know that? Yet the
seed hasn't even given the harvest for it.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
You have no idea.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
As a matter of fact, I would imagine that anytime
the dirt is being plowed, it is hard for the dirt.
But we understand that this is the part of the
process that is absolutely necessary for anything good to be cultivated.
And so it is true in your heart that some
of the hardest seasons you will go through, some of
(12:02):
the heartbreak seasons that you will go through, some of
the things that you would wish away if God came
down and asked you would.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
You like to skip?
Speaker 3 (12:09):
Those stages will be the very stages that later you
will look back and label it and you will say,
that was the season where God taught me the most.
That was the season, am I right, where God.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
Got me out of that.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
Relationship, and I'm so glad that he did. That was
the season where God set me free from something I
thought I needed. And if He would have kept giving
me what I wanted, I would have never gotten what
I needed. And when I label my situation while I'm
still in it, I limit my situation to how I
see it. And the problem with me is I can't
see things like they are. I only see things as
(12:43):
I am, and I am limited, and so if I
look at my situation and label it with my mind,
I will always find a way to zoom into the
microscopically bad or maybe I'm just wanting this one thing
to happen so bad, or maybe something happens in my
life and I don't like the package that it came in,
(13:03):
so I don't receive the purpose that it came for.
I'm gonna stop and breathe for a minute. Clap your
hands and give God praise. Now, clap your hands and
give God praise for all of the gifts that he
gave you that you didn't know it was a gift
when he gave it. Praise God for all the gifts
(13:26):
that he gave you that you grumbled about when he
gave it to you. You got to remember, John wrote, John, Okay,
you know that. Okay, John, the disciple who Jesus loved.
That's what he called himself. That's how he labeled himself.
That's wild to me.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
Who are you the one he loves? Not one of
the one he loves? V One he loves. John did
not write his.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
Gospel as the ministry of Jesus was happening, though he
wrote it somewhere around fifty years after the events transpire.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Now there's a reason I'm telling you this.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
Sometimes I think we read these stories in the Bible
like they're coming from the journal of one of the disciples,
and so we read a story like this and it's wonderful.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
There was a man who couldn't move, and he got
up and he was healed, and it was amazed.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
And even the titles that are in the Bible, like
over John chapter five, it says the healing at the pool,
that's what this story is called in retrospect. But in
real time, this was not a healing at the pool.
In real time, this was a confrontation with the authorities.
(14:47):
I'll explain that later, y'all see what I'm doing. I'm
gonna say it now, I'm gonna explain it later. Jesus
a lot of times, as he was doing things in
his ministry, would not explain to his disciples.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
He would just do it, and as he would do it,
they might think about it. Boy, that was a really
bad move.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
I mean, Jesus should have waited until Tuesday to heal
this guy. Did you see it in the Texas said
he healed him on a bad day.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Now, let me ask you a question.
Speaker 3 (15:20):
If you haven't walked for thirty eight years and you
have the opportunity to walk, is it ever a bad
time to do a good thing for somebody? And yet
that's what the religious leader said. They said he should
have done it on a different day.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
And Jesus knew that.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
But when John is writing the gospel, he's not writing
it later that night.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
He's not taking what he saw happen.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
And John's gospel was a little different because Matthew, Mark, Luke,
and John are all written somewhat differently. Matthew, Mark, and
Luke are called synoptic gospel. It means, see with they
kind of used the same source material, They refer to
the same events, and they just take them from different angles.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
John's gospel is wild.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
He just shows you stuff from the bonus footage from
the cutting room that none of the other disciples showed you.
Maybe it was the special way he felt about his
relationship with Jesus that he includes things that the others don't.
And this miracle is only included in John's gospel. That's
the first thing I wanted to tell you. But the
second thing I wanted to tell you is that it
was included in John's Gospel after decades had passed, which
(16:29):
means that sometimes it is better to evaluate your situation later.
If you look at it in the moment, all you
can see is, man, this is a.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
Lot of trouble.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
Jesus is about to get in. Man, Jesus really is
wasting time. I mean, imagine this. They're setting out.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
To go to the festival. They're on their way.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
The Bible doesn't mention which of the three festivals, but
it's one of the major ones. And they get to Jerusalem,
and Jesus stops by this porch where look at verse three.
These these kinds of people are lying, the blind, the lame,
the paralyzed. Please circle those three words justin if you can.
Verse three. The blind, the lame, the paralyze, the blind,
(17:13):
the lame, the paralyzed. Jesus is stopping by to see somebody.
He is the most important figure in human history. He
is the centerpiece of civilization. He is the Rose of Sharon,
the lily of the Valley, the lion of the tribe
of Judah, the Alpha and the Omega, the Master and
the maker of the universe, the King of Kings, the
Lord of lords, the shepherd of the Loss, the one
(17:35):
that the angels worship twenty four to seven around the throne,
and he stops by to see about somebody that doesn't
even have a name. Of course he has a name,
but his name has been replaced by his label, so
(17:58):
we don't know who he is yes or what he
can do. The only thing we know about him is
that for thirty eight years watch this, he has not.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
Been able to move.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
And there are some of you listening to me preached
today who have been labeled so long by what you
can't do, that you forgot your name. You have been
labeled so long by what you don't have, that you
have forgotten your true nature. You have been labeled so
long by what life didn't give you that you have
forgotten your blessings. But the devil is a liar, I said,
(18:34):
the devil is a liar.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
I'll preach this another ten weeks if I need to.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
He's telling the same lies over and over and over
and over again.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
And what he wants to get you to do.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
If he's effective at his job, and the devil is
really sneaky at it, because he will try to.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
Convince you that your issue is you.
Speaker 4 (19:00):
But I found out.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
That God is masterful at using situations that we would
not wish to accomplish purposes for which we don't even
know to pray.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
I'll give you an example.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
I can tell I'm kind of overwhelming you with information today.
About five is the number of grace, and Bethesda means
house of Mercy and Synoptic Gospels.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
And all this.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
So let me just break it down like this. When
Holly gives gifts at our house, I.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Will say that she is the best gift giver that
I have ever known in my life.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
I also say she is the greatest gift that I
have ever known in my life other than.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
You, Lord, Amen. And I'll also say that I'm not
even saying that just so you'll clap for it. I
really feel that way.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
But she used to do something when she would give
gifts that was so disappointing, and we finally got her
to stop a few years ago. But let me tell
what you're doing. I don't use this intentionally. I don't
know if it was just something she did out of efficiency.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
I don't know what's you doing, Okay, al, I told
you she gives great gifts.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
But let's say Christmas will roll around, right, and there's
several gifts for each person.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
That Holly bought. Right, so she wraps some They're beautiful
and all that.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
You take the wrapping paper off, and then there would
be a box that she would put the gift in.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
But the box was absolutely no indication.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
Of the value of the gift. And here's what I
mean by that. She would take the box from the
nicest store. You can imagine, like picture your favorite store,
your favorite brand, right, like the fanciest, nicest box. So
you peel the paperback and you'd be like, oh, yeah, yeah,
this is.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
Gonna be good. This is about to be good.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
And then when you would take the lid off the
box she had put the worst gifts. The box would
say Nordstrom and the gift would say Dollar Tree, and
you'd be looking at the You'd be looking at the
gift about what is this? Because she would put the
(21:13):
worst gift in the best box. God does just the opposite.
I'm sorry, Holly, but this is one time where you
are nothing like God. Because God will take the worst box,
the worst situation, the worst hell you've ever been through,
(21:36):
the worst insult.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
The worst persecution.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
God will hand you a box, and the box will
be so beat up, and the box will look so small,
and the box will look like it's been rained on,
and the box will look like the dog shoot it up,
and the box will look like betrayal, and the box
will look like God, I don't know what to do,
and the box will look like there's no way out
(22:00):
of this. But if you open that box and trust
in God, not the box, I said, trust God, not
the box, because my God is out the box and
God will put the best stuff cannot reach. Like I'm
in Saint Paul, Minnesota on a Tuesday night. God will
(22:21):
take the worst box and put the best gift. And
I'm saying this in case life dropped off a box
on your doorstep and it doesn't look like what you
prayed for, and it doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
With what you feel.
Speaker 4 (22:36):
Called to, and it doesn't line.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
Up with your expectations.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
But over that box, because God has a way of
putting the best blessings in the ugliest boxes, so the
box doesn't have to be beautiful for the gift to
feed from him. I find somebody say open the box,
open the box, open the box. God can do what
(23:01):
he wants to open the box. Let God out the box.
You got your little puny way of labeling what God
can do and who God can do it through. But
open the box. You're not even in church today, but
God can meet you in the kitchen. Open the box,
put down the fork in the night, lift your hands
(23:23):
and give God praise. God is out the box. Jesus
said to the man, I know the situation isn't what
(23:48):
you would have chosen, and I know this is not
the place you want to be.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
But your label is lying.
Speaker 3 (23:59):
I wish I could draw this, but I didn't bring
my screen out this week, and I'm not gonna slow
down the momentum of this message for technology. Just imagine
boom boop blop. Right, you've seen it, and imagine one
of the loops says.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
You can't do that. That's the lie. Right.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
But when everything that's around you looks like sickness long enough,
you begin to believe the box. When everything that your
eyes can see, when everything that your emotions feel tell you, well,
I guess alcoholism is just a genetic thing. And there's
(24:49):
no amount of therapy or recovery that can break those
chains off of you.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
And there's not even enough prayers for it, because didn't
you pray about this last year? Thirty eight years?
Speaker 3 (24:59):
Man, that's a long that's a long time to circle
the situation. It brings me all the way back to
the first story I shared in this series, when the
Israelites wandered in the same loop for forty years. You know,
technically it was thirty eight. Yeah, it was thirty eight
because one year they spent getting out of Egypt, one
(25:21):
year they spent getting into the Promised Land. Those years
aren't counted in the forty it was thirty eight years.
And people will always tell the story of your first
year and your last year, but they don't see the
thirty eight year loop.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
So please do this.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
When you're sharing your testimony with somebody, be honest with them.
Don't make your label a lie. Don't tell them. And
the Lord just set me free from anxiety. I had
somebody tell me that one time, and the Lord set
me free from anxiety. Now, I said, I believe that
he does that, and I believe that he did that
for you, and I praise him for it. But what
exactly do you mean he set you free from anxiety?
(25:59):
Because when they said it, they said the Lord set
me free from an anxiety in nineteen eighty four. So
what I wanted to ask was, and since then.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Yeah, what did you do? Swallow the key? The Lord
sets you free? You swallowed the key or the Lord
swallowed the key? Like what happened?
Speaker 3 (26:18):
And as they began to share in more detail, it
was actually more powerful to hear about their process than
it was to hear about their product, because what they
meant by it when they labeled it the Lord set
me free was they meant he began to show me
ways to deal with it that were not harmful and
destructive and sinful. And so instead of just going to
(26:40):
porn every time I felt anxious, instead of just going
to drugs every time I feel anxious, instead of just
going to self mutilation every time I felt anxious, instead
of just waiting up all night, I learned some They
didn't say this, but they basically said, I learned some loops.
I learned some new loops, and I quit just going
around and around spiraling, and I found out how to
interrupt my worry with the Word of God.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
Isn't that more powerful?
Speaker 3 (27:05):
Come on, isn't that more powerful to hear that than
to hear somebody say, well, the Lord just set me free,
And then you're like, well, I guess he doesn't love me.
He must not love me like that, or I must
be doing something wrong. Maybe they're just not describing freedom
fully to know that freedom involves a journey of thirty
eight years.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
This is powerful.
Speaker 3 (27:26):
Man.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
I even feel it as I'm preaching right now.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
I feel the Lord telling me to slow down and
tell you what it really means that this man got
up and walked.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
It doesn't say that he knew where to go. It
doesn't say that his life was problem free.
Speaker 3 (27:43):
In fact, Jesus finds him a few verses later and
tells him stop sinning or something worse is going to happen.
He's not even finished with his issue yet. But the
powerful thing about Jesus when I get to the part
of my sermon where I know this is the word
of the Lord, because there is a moment in a
sera where the word of the Lord comes. It's all
the word of the Lord. This whole passage is the
(28:04):
word of the Lord. But there is a moment where
the word of the Lord comes to you. And what
happens in that moment is your condition is interrupted. By
a command. So it's like this. The man's condition is sick, paralyzed,
(28:25):
and stuck on the porch. The command of Jesus makes
no sense in the face of that condition.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
Get up, take your mat, and walk.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
Sometimes God will give you a command that makes no
sense in the face of your condition. Sometimes God will
tell you as a teenager, I don't care what all
your friends do.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
I don't care what they say you're weird about. I
don't care what they call you for it. You be pure.
I don't care what.
Speaker 3 (28:49):
A thousand people do over here, a thousand people, just
like your parents used to say. I don't care if
everybody else is doing it, if everybody else was jumping
off a bridge, and you'd be like shut out. But see,
I say, with everybody else was jumping off a bridge,
I just want to tell you what Jesus did. Everybody
else didn't die on the cross for you. Everybody else
can't rise from the grave. Everybody else didn't going to
(29:10):
be there for you in the midnight hour. Everybody else
didn't make you knit. You call you, choose, you gift.
You don't let them label you. Don't even let them
tell you what kind of kid you need to be
to be cool. I'm not concerned with you being cool.
I'm concerned with you being called. I'm concerned with a
God who can raise you up and make your name great.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
And I'm concerned.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
With a God whose name is greater than any other name.
And That's what I'm concerned about in this season of
my life, not what they label me. I don't care
what they say about me. I don't care what they
say about my preaching. I care when I close this
Bible today? Did I say the word of the Lord?
Did I speak the word of the Lord? Did I
(29:53):
say what God gave me to say the best I
could say it with a stammering tongue and a limited
vocabulary and a monkst corner South Carolina accent.
Speaker 4 (30:04):
Did I say the word of the Lord?
Speaker 3 (30:06):
Not how somebody else said it, not how I should
say it, not how I would say it if.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
I was smarter.
Speaker 3 (30:12):
Did I say it to the limit of my IQ?
Did I speak the words of God? And when the
word of the Lord came to this man, it was
so personal. The Bible says something that I think you
need to see before you hear what Jesus said to him.
(30:32):
I want to show you something. In John chapter five,
verse five, This is the part that made me cry
when it says when Jesus saw him, excuse me, that's
verse six. That's verse six, when Jesus saw him. Go
back to verse five. Though one was lying there now
(30:57):
lying is not his name, is his label. That's the
condition he was in. And he was lying on a
mat that was not his name, could have been. It
is a name, but it's not his name. It's where
he is, not who he is. I'm gonna preach this, Lord.
(31:21):
I am going to preach this just like you showed me,
because it was so beautiful how the Lord showed me
in verse six. The key to all of this is
when Jesus saw him justin circle.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
The word him.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
Now contrasts that when Jesus walked by. There's a blind person.
There's a person who can't move. There's another person I'm
not sure of their condition. There's somebody who's only been
at the pool two weeks. Here's somebody who's been here
two years. Here's someone who has been here thirty eight years.
I'm speaking to somebody today, and this is not your
first day in this situation.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
This is not your first frustration.
Speaker 3 (32:02):
That's all right, because the Bible says that Jesus saw him.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
I still got to show you what I mean.
Speaker 3 (32:10):
It says that Jesus saw him lying there. Now, if
you fast forward, when the man gets up, the religious
leaders see the man, but they see him a little differently.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
They label him differently.
Speaker 3 (32:25):
They label him according to his condition, and they label
him according to their expectation. The Sabbath was supposed to
be a day of no work, but they see him
carrying a mat. The Sabbath was not a day where
you can't make up your bed. The Sabbath was a
day where you couldn't do commerce in the city. But
they've twisted it, they have labeled it. Their label has
(32:47):
become a lie. Did you know that religion will always
try to label something that the Lord gave you, and
instead of using it to lift a burden, it will
create one. So you begin to see God as the
person who's perpetually disappointed in you.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
God is not disappointed in you.
Speaker 3 (33:04):
How can he be disappointed in what he appointed? If
he called you, that means he knew you would be
in this situation before you were in this situation. You
think you can surprise God. You think God's like I
wish I would have done a scouting report on them.
You think God is somehow mesmerized by your weakness? Now
people are People are very different the religious leaders in
(33:26):
verse ten, they have their focus somewhere completely different.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
The Bible says that the.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed,
it is the Sabbath, the law forbids.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
You to carry your mat. Now, ho on, I'm confused.
Speaker 3 (33:42):
They are looking at a man and they are talking
about a mat. How can they only see the mat
and not the man? No, no, no, I'm honestly asking
how can they see a man who has never walked before?
Speaker 1 (34:05):
If he's thirty eight years old. Maybe he did walk a.
Speaker 3 (34:08):
Little while before those thirty eight years, we don't know.
But for almost forty years he hasn't been able to walk.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
And he's walking and they.
Speaker 3 (34:18):
Walk up to him and say, hey, you can't do that, and.
Speaker 4 (34:23):
He's like, I know. I didn't think I could either.
Speaker 3 (34:28):
But I met a man had he walked by me
that he stopped for me.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
Keeddy talked to me.
Speaker 4 (34:34):
Eddy told me that get up God, take it up
and walk. He I'm walking in the power of his words.
Speaker 7 (34:43):
And I'm walking in the potential of a brighter tomorrow
and I'm living in the life.
Speaker 4 (34:51):
Of a new day.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
I'm just speculating.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
I think this man started singing at this point. I
think he started singing, look at what the Lord has done.
Speaker 4 (35:04):
I'm never going back to the way.
Speaker 3 (35:08):
That's why I got my mat, because I'm not going
back saying, not going back, saying, not going back.
Speaker 4 (35:15):
Give on my spot cause.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
I'm cause I'm take my man because I'm all right.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
We need to work on y'all's rhythm and call it
the spot.
Speaker 8 (35:30):
My man is walking, and you're talking about a math.
I'm a practice. You're talking about a mac. I'm a man.
Speaker 3 (35:41):
You can't see the man for the math. And it
makes me wonder, what's your mat that I can't see?
That's got you magnifying mind? This man has to be singing.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
Carrying a mat.
Speaker 3 (36:01):
He's not going back to the place he's been for
thirty eight years.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
That isn't working anymore. Man, he's happy too.
Speaker 3 (36:11):
He's happy carrying that man because he's holding something that's
been holding him his whole life.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
Boy, he's happy. He turns around. Goodbye.
Speaker 3 (36:26):
Yes today five covered colonades. Goodbye colonades, y'all missed it.
Speaker 4 (36:35):
I'm living in the line of a new day.
Speaker 6 (36:39):
I won't waste another then in on my oldways.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
Praise the Lord.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
He's not even saved yet, not even born again. He
don't even know it is Jesus yet. He doesn't find
that out until later.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
See.
Speaker 3 (36:56):
Sometimes God does it now, but you pray.
Speaker 4 (37:00):
Later because you didn't even know he was doing it.
Speaker 3 (37:05):
That's the tide I feel God saying, praise.
Speaker 5 (37:09):
Me now and I'll explain it later.
Speaker 3 (37:17):
My man is walking talking about I'm dancing on the
I'm carry and the mat that I want Slade on
Carrie and the mat that I want Slade carry and
the mat that I want.
Speaker 6 (37:30):
Slade or carrying the mat.
Speaker 4 (37:34):
I mean this man ain't heavy.
Speaker 3 (37:35):
Carrie in the batter carry.
Speaker 4 (37:40):
Yeah, you can't do that. You can't do that, Yes
I can.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
We're not doing the stairs. Get up, and here's the pharisee.
Speaker 3 (37:51):
He's like, carrying the mat, you can't do that. No,
you're doing it wrong, carrying that I want.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
You can't do that.
Speaker 6 (38:03):
No, you're doing it wrong, carrying the men where I.
Speaker 3 (38:07):
Used to like, you can't do that because this is
the wrong day.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
No, we got confrontation.
Speaker 4 (38:18):
Y'all don't know how to act in church?
Speaker 3 (38:21):
What kind of churches? What kind of churches?
Speaker 7 (38:25):
This this is the house my mercy.
Speaker 4 (38:30):
This is a place stark gray. This is a place
where I am not what I did.
Speaker 3 (38:40):
I am not what I was.
Speaker 5 (38:43):
I am who fled.
Speaker 6 (38:47):
Said by, can't do that, can't do that, just no way,
can't do that new loop.
Speaker 1 (39:08):
I listen to that.
Speaker 9 (39:10):
Man said, I'm making this up on the car, off
the cough. I don't know if it's any good. But
they said, the law says you can't. The man said,
the word says.
Speaker 1 (39:33):
Otherwise. Somebody shout otherwise otherwise.
Speaker 3 (39:40):
And the hand of the Lord was upon me, and
he took me down to the valley, and the valley
was full of bones, and they were very dried. And
the bones said death, and the bones said over. But
the word said otherwise, And God said, proph aside to
(40:02):
the poems, prophosy to the marriage, prophesie to the bankruptcy,
prophosy to the depression, proph aside to the blindness, proph
aside to the lameness, A prophesie to your legs. I
propheside to your righteousness in Christ. I prophesy, there is
(40:25):
a better word than condemnation.
Speaker 5 (40:29):
Shame said died, But God said.
Speaker 7 (40:33):
Bo, I'm dancing on the grind. I'm dancing on the
grasd I'm dancing on the grass.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
You can't do that. You can't dance in church. You
can't be happy you're going through hell.
Speaker 4 (41:07):
I might be in it, but it is not in me.
I'm not my mad. I'm not my mad. I'm not
my bad decision. I'm not my shame. I'm not see abuse.
Speaker 1 (41:26):
I'm not my past.
Speaker 4 (41:28):
I'm not myself.
Speaker 9 (41:31):
I am.
Speaker 3 (41:33):
No what he loves.
Speaker 4 (41:35):
I'm for what he stopped five for. And I'm dass
then on the grad.
Speaker 7 (41:42):
I'm dascing on the grave.
Speaker 4 (41:46):
I'm bassing.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
You can't death, you got moves.
Speaker 4 (41:52):
Show me your church dass yet, I'm on your feet
and pray for shut up in hot.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
You can't do that. You can't dance on a grave.
You can't get beauty for ashes.
Speaker 3 (42:20):
You can't be grateful when you still got a kid
who's far away from God.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
You can't keep worshiping through tears.
Speaker 3 (42:28):
You can't keep trusting that God is good through cancer.
Speaker 4 (42:32):
You can't do that.
Speaker 3 (42:34):
But the word.
Speaker 4 (42:36):
Says otherwise.
Speaker 5 (42:39):
I said, no words set otherwise, the stone set dead,
but no word says right.
Speaker 10 (42:55):
Get up, get up, get up, get out of gray,
get up, get up, get get up, get up, get up, get.
Speaker 4 (43:06):
Up, see awesome.
Speaker 2 (43:20):
Get Thank you for joining us. Special thanks to those
of you who give generously to this ministry. Is because
of you that this ministry is possible. You can click
the link in the description to give now or visit
Elevation Church dot org slash podcast for more information and
(43:40):
if you enjoyed the podcast, you can subscribe.
Speaker 1 (43:43):
You can share it with your friends.
Speaker 2 (43:45):
You can click the share button, take a screenshot and
share it on your social stories and tag us at
Elevation Church.
Speaker 1 (43:50):
Thanks again for listening. God bless you.
Hey, this is Stephen Ferdick.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
I'm the pastor of Elevation Church and this is our podcast.
I wanted to thank you for joining us today.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hope this inspires you. Hope it builds your faith.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hope it gives your perspective to see God is moving.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
In your life.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Enjoy the message.
Speaker 4 (00:18):
But if you've been redeemed and you know it. If
he dacked you out of the pit, then you know it.
Speaker 5 (00:26):
If He brought you this farm, then you know it.
Sank Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.
Speaker 6 (00:41):
Thank you.
Speaker 5 (00:45):
We can sing it all day, we will sing it
all night, but we gotta stup cause it breathes it time.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
The Word of the Lord is coming your way, whether
you're in this room or whether you're watching this later,
whether you're listening in a car. I hope you're not
watching in a car unless you're a passenger.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Just listen and watch the road.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
The Lord has something he wants to show you today
in his word. This is the final message in the
greatest series in the history of our church.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Y'all don't like it.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
My favorite series in the history of our church, because
it's the one that I needed the most. Because it's
called same lies, new loops, same lies, new loops. And
the Lord is giving you some new ways of thinking,
some new ways of being, some new ways of talking,
(01:55):
some new ways of seeing, new loops. It's going to
be a maze today because we're going to see a
picture of somebody who had believed a lie for so
long that to him.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
It was true.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
And when you have believed a lie long enough, is
true to you even though everybody else can see that
it's not. Today, God wants to show you something about
the way that he sees you. Go ahead and put
your name in the comments. And since you can't do
that live, tell the person next to you your name.
Tell them your full name, the one on your driver's license. Gohead,
(02:30):
give me your name real quick. Give me your driver's
license name. We're going to be spending a few moments today.
Well that's a long name. I didn't say your eye
color and your height. I didn't say tell them about
your DUI either. Leave that part out. But we're going
(02:54):
to be spending some time today together. In John chapter
five remains standing, if you're able for the reading of
God's word, And as I share this with you today,
the Lord wants to give us a picture.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
Of what it means.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
To leave the lies behind. To leave the lies behind,
that's what we come to church for. Right we want
to come to church and hear truth and just take
lies home with us like we didn't hear the truth.
We want to come to church, receive the truth of
God's word, and take it forward into the world that
He's called us to change. John chapter five, verse one.
(03:33):
I may just read all sixteen verses. I wasn't going
to stop around verse six seven, but I thought I
would go on down and read the whole thing. Now,
y'all listen, what's wrong with y'all? John chapter five, verse one.
Sometime later Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of
(03:53):
the Jewish festivals. Now there is in Jerusalem, near the
sheep Gate a pool which in Aramaic is called Bethesda.
That word means house of mercy. It's like Bethlehem means
house of bread. Bethe is house. And then sata from
has said the word that means covenant, love or favor,
or grace or mercy. It means all of those things.
(04:14):
It's the house of mercy. At least that's what is called.
It's supposed to be a place where people can come
and get grace. But it isn't, and you'll see that
in the passage. It's called Bethesda, and it's surrounded by
five covered colonnades. And incidentally, since we're in John five,
(04:35):
five in the Bible is often symbolic of grace.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
It's the number of grace. So this is supposed to
be a place.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
Of grace, you know, can I say that about our church?
This is supposed to be a place of grace where
anybody can come like they are and not leave that way.
It was surrounded by five covered colonnades, and here are
a great number of disabled people used to li the
blind the lane. The paralyzed one who was there had
(05:05):
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.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Do you want to get well? Sir?
Speaker 3 (05:20):
The invalid reply, I have no one to help me
into the pool.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
When the water is stirred.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
While I am trying to get in, someone else goes
down ahead of me.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Then Jesus said to him, get up, pick.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
Up your mat and walk at Once the man was cure.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
He picked up his map and walked. But that's not
the end of the verse.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Is it. The day on which this took place was
a sabbath. And so the Jewish leader said to the
man who had been healed, it is the.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Sabbath the law forbids you to carry your mat. But
he replied, well, I love this Bible verse right here.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
The man who made me well said to me, I
hear what you're saying to me. But the one who
walked by me and told me I could walk to
told me to do this. The man who made me
well said to me, pick up your mat and walk.
(06:34):
I got good news for you today. Church. The title
of my messages the word says otherwise. The word says otherwise.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Tell your neighbor.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
I know you feel kind of depressed. I know it
looks like it's over. But the word says otherwise. Put
it in all caps in the chat, put it in
your language, put it in your native tongue, put it
in a mulojis.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
I don't care. The word says otherwise. And we're gonna
give this message a subtitle. Also, we're gonna call it hmm.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
See if I can explain this, your label is lying.
Your label is lying. You know how that thing said
it was it was a healthy food.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Your label is lying.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
You know how that guy said he was a Christian guy.
You're labeled, and he wore a Christian shirt.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
You're label is lying.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
You know how people say when you come to Christ,
everything will just be better all at once. Your label
is lying. But God's word is true. Father, Thank you
for your word. In Jesus name, Amen be seated. Your
label is lying. I'll share by way of anecdote what
(08:10):
I mean by this statement, but first write the statement down.
Don't label it until later. Don't label it until later.
Now you're gonna write that down. You don't even know
what I mean by that, but you will later. I
(08:32):
was in a songwriting session recently and we were just
starting to work on a song. We had really not
identified the tempo of the song, the time signature of
the song, or even the theme of the song. I
didn't know yet whether it wanted to be a ballad
or a bop. Sometimes you don't know. Sometimes a song.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
Starts like really really worshipful.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
And the next thing you know, you're dancing on a
table and you don't know what happened. So the key
to this is to be patient. Be patient, let the
song tell you what it wants to be. Let the
spirit of God have his way. If you're writing a
worship song and we were just starting to write a
(09:12):
song and the producer who was recording the session and
needed to save the song on his computer, stopped and
asked a question.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
He said, what is this song called?
Speaker 3 (09:24):
Well? I look back at him, and I knew that
he needed to save the file so he could access
it and be organized. But I looked at him and said,
I can't name it. We haven't even made it yet.
We need to make it before we name it. If
we name it before we make it, there may be
(09:45):
something else that the song wants to be that we
don't allow it to become because we already gave it
a name. So what we need to do is just
save the file as a work in progress, and then
we can see what is going on to be by
the end of the day, because we'll label it later.
(10:06):
We'll make it now and label it later. I'll know
who this is for. But maybe that's the word that
you came to get today. Make it now and name
it later. We're so specific in our time about trying
to diagnose everything. Even every child is diagnosed with all
of these conditions before they are seven years old, and
(10:29):
sometimes that can be helpful, but other times it can
be a hurdle because.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
If I give a child a label.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
Before that child has even had the chance to develop
beyond those developmental limitations, I may limit what the child
thinks that the child can be because I gave the
child a label too soon that limited their potential mentally,
even though their potential in God was unlimited.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
Label it later.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
And I'm not talking about not going to doctors and specialists,
you understand.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
I'm using this.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
As a way to get you to see that sometimes
you are trying to label your life as you are
living your life, and it is causing you to misdiagnose
some of the things about you that only God can
reveal in time.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
It is causing you.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
To name things and save things to the hard drive
of your mind, and you call yourself things, and you
call situations things that they really aren't because you are
trying to label.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
It before you have even lived it.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
So you say things like this is the worst season
of my life. How do you know that? Yet the
seed hasn't even given the harvest for it.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
You have no idea.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
As a matter of fact, I would imagine that anytime
the dirt is being plowed, it is hard for the dirt.
But we understand that this is the part of the
process that is absolutely necessary for anything good to be cultivated.
And so it is true in your heart that some
of the hardest seasons you will go through, some of
(12:02):
the heartbreak seasons that you will go through, some of
the things that you would wish away if God came
down and asked you would.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
You like to skip?
Speaker 3 (12:09):
Those stages will be the very stages that later you
will look back and label it and you will say,
that was the season where God taught me the most.
That was the season, am I right, where God.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
Got me out of that.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
Relationship, and I'm so glad that he did. That was
the season where God set me free from something I
thought I needed. And if He would have kept giving
me what I wanted, I would have never gotten what
I needed. And when I label my situation while I'm
still in it, I limit my situation to how I
see it. And the problem with me is I can't
see things like they are. I only see things as
(12:43):
I am, and I am limited, and so if I
look at my situation and label it with my mind,
I will always find a way to zoom into the
microscopically bad or maybe I'm just wanting this one thing
to happen so bad, or maybe something happens in my
life and I don't like the package that it came in,
(13:03):
so I don't receive the purpose that it came for.
I'm gonna stop and breathe for a minute. Clap your
hands and give God praise. Now, clap your hands and
give God praise for all of the gifts that he
gave you that you didn't know it was a gift
when he gave it. Praise God for all the gifts
(13:26):
that he gave you that you grumbled about when he
gave it to you. You got to remember, John wrote, John, Okay,
you know that. Okay, John, the disciple who Jesus loved.
That's what he called himself. That's how he labeled himself.
That's wild to me.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
Who are you the one he loves? Not one of
the one he loves? V One he loves. John did
not write his.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
Gospel as the ministry of Jesus was happening, though he
wrote it somewhere around fifty years after the events transpire.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Now there's a reason I'm telling you this.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
Sometimes I think we read these stories in the Bible
like they're coming from the journal of one of the disciples,
and so we read a story like this and it's wonderful.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
There was a man who couldn't move, and he got
up and he was healed, and it was amazed.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
And even the titles that are in the Bible, like
over John chapter five, it says the healing at the pool,
that's what this story is called in retrospect. But in
real time, this was not a healing at the pool.
In real time, this was a confrontation with the authorities.
(14:47):
I'll explain that later, y'all see what I'm doing. I'm
gonna say it now, I'm gonna explain it later. Jesus
a lot of times, as he was doing things in
his ministry, would not explain to his disciples.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
He would just do it, and as he would do it,
they might think about it. Boy, that was a really
bad move.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
I mean, Jesus should have waited until Tuesday to heal
this guy. Did you see it in the Texas said
he healed him on a bad day.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Now, let me ask you a question.
Speaker 3 (15:20):
If you haven't walked for thirty eight years and you
have the opportunity to walk, is it ever a bad
time to do a good thing for somebody? And yet
that's what the religious leader said. They said he should
have done it on a different day.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
And Jesus knew that.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
But when John is writing the gospel, he's not writing
it later that night.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
He's not taking what he saw happen.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
And John's gospel was a little different because Matthew, Mark, Luke,
and John are all written somewhat differently. Matthew, Mark, and
Luke are called synoptic gospel. It means, see with they
kind of used the same source material, They refer to
the same events, and they just take them from different angles.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
John's gospel is wild.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
He just shows you stuff from the bonus footage from
the cutting room that none of the other disciples showed you.
Maybe it was the special way he felt about his
relationship with Jesus that he includes things that the others don't.
And this miracle is only included in John's gospel. That's
the first thing I wanted to tell you. But the
second thing I wanted to tell you is that it
was included in John's Gospel after decades had passed, which
(16:29):
means that sometimes it is better to evaluate your situation later.
If you look at it in the moment, all you
can see is, man, this is a.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
Lot of trouble.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
Jesus is about to get in. Man, Jesus really is
wasting time. I mean, imagine this. They're setting out.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
To go to the festival. They're on their way.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
The Bible doesn't mention which of the three festivals, but
it's one of the major ones. And they get to Jerusalem,
and Jesus stops by this porch where look at verse three.
These these kinds of people are lying, the blind, the lame,
the paralyzed. Please circle those three words justin if you can.
Verse three. The blind, the lame, the paralyze, the blind,
(17:13):
the lame, the paralyzed. Jesus is stopping by to see somebody.
He is the most important figure in human history. He
is the centerpiece of civilization. He is the Rose of Sharon,
the lily of the Valley, the lion of the tribe
of Judah, the Alpha and the Omega, the Master and
the maker of the universe, the King of Kings, the
Lord of lords, the shepherd of the Loss, the one
(17:35):
that the angels worship twenty four to seven around the throne,
and he stops by to see about somebody that doesn't
even have a name. Of course he has a name,
but his name has been replaced by his label, so
(17:58):
we don't know who he is yes or what he
can do. The only thing we know about him is
that for thirty eight years watch this, he has not.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
Been able to move.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
And there are some of you listening to me preached
today who have been labeled so long by what you
can't do, that you forgot your name. You have been
labeled so long by what you don't have, that you
have forgotten your true nature. You have been labeled so
long by what life didn't give you that you have
forgotten your blessings. But the devil is a liar, I said,
(18:34):
the devil is a liar.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
I'll preach this another ten weeks if I need to.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
He's telling the same lies over and over and over
and over again.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
And what he wants to get you to do.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
If he's effective at his job, and the devil is
really sneaky at it, because he will try to.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
Convince you that your issue is you.
Speaker 4 (19:00):
But I found out.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
That God is masterful at using situations that we would
not wish to accomplish purposes for which we don't even
know to pray.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
I'll give you an example.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
I can tell I'm kind of overwhelming you with information today.
About five is the number of grace, and Bethesda means
house of Mercy and Synoptic Gospels.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
And all this.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
So let me just break it down like this. When
Holly gives gifts at our house, I.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Will say that she is the best gift giver that
I have ever known in my life.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
I also say she is the greatest gift that I
have ever known in my life other than.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
You, Lord, Amen. And I'll also say that I'm not
even saying that just so you'll clap for it. I
really feel that way.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
But she used to do something when she would give
gifts that was so disappointing, and we finally got her
to stop a few years ago. But let me tell
what you're doing. I don't use this intentionally. I don't
know if it was just something she did out of efficiency.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
I don't know what's you doing, Okay, al, I told
you she gives great gifts.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
But let's say Christmas will roll around, right, and there's
several gifts for each person.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
That Holly bought. Right, so she wraps some They're beautiful
and all that.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
You take the wrapping paper off, and then there would
be a box that she would put the gift in.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
But the box was absolutely no indication.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
Of the value of the gift. And here's what I
mean by that. She would take the box from the
nicest store. You can imagine, like picture your favorite store,
your favorite brand, right, like the fanciest, nicest box. So
you peel the paperback and you'd be like, oh, yeah, yeah,
this is.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
Gonna be good. This is about to be good.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
And then when you would take the lid off the
box she had put the worst gifts. The box would
say Nordstrom and the gift would say Dollar Tree, and
you'd be looking at the You'd be looking at the
gift about what is this? Because she would put the
(21:13):
worst gift in the best box. God does just the opposite.
I'm sorry, Holly, but this is one time where you
are nothing like God. Because God will take the worst box,
the worst situation, the worst hell you've ever been through,
(21:36):
the worst insult.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
The worst persecution.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
God will hand you a box, and the box will
be so beat up, and the box will look so small,
and the box will look like it's been rained on,
and the box will look like the dog shoot it up,
and the box will look like betrayal, and the box
will look like God, I don't know what to do,
and the box will look like there's no way out
(22:00):
of this. But if you open that box and trust
in God, not the box, I said, trust God, not
the box, because my God is out the box and
God will put the best stuff cannot reach. Like I'm
in Saint Paul, Minnesota on a Tuesday night. God will
(22:21):
take the worst box and put the best gift. And
I'm saying this in case life dropped off a box
on your doorstep and it doesn't look like what you
prayed for, and it doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
With what you feel.
Speaker 4 (22:36):
Called to, and it doesn't line.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
Up with your expectations.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
But over that box, because God has a way of
putting the best blessings in the ugliest boxes, so the
box doesn't have to be beautiful for the gift to
feed from him. I find somebody say open the box,
open the box, open the box. God can do what
(23:01):
he wants to open the box. Let God out the box.
You got your little puny way of labeling what God
can do and who God can do it through. But
open the box. You're not even in church today, but
God can meet you in the kitchen. Open the box,
put down the fork in the night, lift your hands
(23:23):
and give God praise. God is out the box. Jesus
said to the man, I know the situation isn't what
(23:48):
you would have chosen, and I know this is not
the place you want to be.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
But your label is lying.
Speaker 3 (23:59):
I wish I could draw this, but I didn't bring
my screen out this week, and I'm not gonna slow
down the momentum of this message for technology. Just imagine
boom boop blop. Right, you've seen it, and imagine one
of the loops says.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
You can't do that. That's the lie. Right.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
But when everything that's around you looks like sickness long enough,
you begin to believe the box. When everything that your
eyes can see, when everything that your emotions feel tell you, well,
I guess alcoholism is just a genetic thing. And there's
(24:49):
no amount of therapy or recovery that can break those
chains off of you.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
And there's not even enough prayers for it, because didn't
you pray about this last year? Thirty eight years?
Speaker 3 (24:59):
Man, that's a long that's a long time to circle
the situation. It brings me all the way back to
the first story I shared in this series, when the
Israelites wandered in the same loop for forty years. You know,
technically it was thirty eight. Yeah, it was thirty eight
because one year they spent getting out of Egypt, one
(25:21):
year they spent getting into the Promised Land. Those years
aren't counted in the forty it was thirty eight years.
And people will always tell the story of your first
year and your last year, but they don't see the
thirty eight year loop.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
So please do this.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
When you're sharing your testimony with somebody, be honest with them.
Don't make your label a lie. Don't tell them. And
the Lord just set me free from anxiety. I had
somebody tell me that one time, and the Lord set
me free from anxiety. Now, I said, I believe that
he does that, and I believe that he did that
for you, and I praise him for it. But what
exactly do you mean he set you free from anxiety?
(25:59):
Because when they said it, they said the Lord set
me free from an anxiety in nineteen eighty four. So
what I wanted to ask was, and since then.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Yeah, what did you do? Swallow the key? The Lord
sets you free? You swallowed the key or the Lord
swallowed the key? Like what happened?
Speaker 3 (26:18):
And as they began to share in more detail, it
was actually more powerful to hear about their process than
it was to hear about their product, because what they
meant by it when they labeled it the Lord set
me free was they meant he began to show me
ways to deal with it that were not harmful and
destructive and sinful. And so instead of just going to
(26:40):
porn every time I felt anxious, instead of just going
to drugs every time I feel anxious, instead of just
going to self mutilation every time I felt anxious, instead
of just waiting up all night, I learned some They
didn't say this, but they basically said, I learned some loops.
I learned some new loops, and I quit just going
around and around spiraling, and I found out how to
interrupt my worry with the Word of God.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
Isn't that more powerful?
Speaker 3 (27:05):
Come on, isn't that more powerful to hear that than
to hear somebody say, well, the Lord just set me free,
And then you're like, well, I guess he doesn't love me.
He must not love me like that, or I must
be doing something wrong. Maybe they're just not describing freedom
fully to know that freedom involves a journey of thirty
eight years.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
This is powerful.
Speaker 3 (27:26):
Man.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
I even feel it as I'm preaching right now.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
I feel the Lord telling me to slow down and
tell you what it really means that this man got
up and walked.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
It doesn't say that he knew where to go. It
doesn't say that his life was problem free.
Speaker 3 (27:43):
In fact, Jesus finds him a few verses later and
tells him stop sinning or something worse is going to happen.
He's not even finished with his issue yet. But the
powerful thing about Jesus when I get to the part
of my sermon where I know this is the word
of the Lord, because there is a moment in a
sera where the word of the Lord comes. It's all
the word of the Lord. This whole passage is the
(28:04):
word of the Lord. But there is a moment where
the word of the Lord comes to you. And what
happens in that moment is your condition is interrupted. By
a command. So it's like this. The man's condition is sick, paralyzed,
(28:25):
and stuck on the porch. The command of Jesus makes
no sense in the face of that condition.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
Get up, take your mat, and walk.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
Sometimes God will give you a command that makes no
sense in the face of your condition. Sometimes God will
tell you as a teenager, I don't care what all
your friends do.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
I don't care what they say you're weird about. I
don't care what they call you for it. You be pure.
I don't care what.
Speaker 3 (28:49):
A thousand people do over here, a thousand people, just
like your parents used to say. I don't care if
everybody else is doing it, if everybody else was jumping
off a bridge, and you'd be like shut out. But see,
I say, with everybody else was jumping off a bridge,
I just want to tell you what Jesus did. Everybody
else didn't die on the cross for you. Everybody else
can't rise from the grave. Everybody else didn't going to
(29:10):
be there for you in the midnight hour. Everybody else
didn't make you knit. You call you, choose, you gift.
You don't let them label you. Don't even let them
tell you what kind of kid you need to be
to be cool. I'm not concerned with you being cool.
I'm concerned with you being called. I'm concerned with a
God who can raise you up and make your name great.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
And I'm concerned.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
With a God whose name is greater than any other name.
And That's what I'm concerned about in this season of
my life, not what they label me. I don't care
what they say about me. I don't care what they
say about my preaching. I care when I close this
Bible today? Did I say the word of the Lord?
Did I speak the word of the Lord? Did I
(29:53):
say what God gave me to say the best I
could say it with a stammering tongue and a limited
vocabulary and a monkst corner South Carolina accent.
Speaker 4 (30:04):
Did I say the word of the Lord?
Speaker 3 (30:06):
Not how somebody else said it, not how I should
say it, not how I would say it if.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
I was smarter.
Speaker 3 (30:12):
Did I say it to the limit of my IQ?
Did I speak the words of God? And when the
word of the Lord came to this man, it was
so personal. The Bible says something that I think you
need to see before you hear what Jesus said to him.
(30:32):
I want to show you something. In John chapter five,
verse five, This is the part that made me cry
when it says when Jesus saw him, excuse me, that's
verse six. That's verse six, when Jesus saw him. Go
back to verse five. Though one was lying there now
(30:57):
lying is not his name, is his label. That's the
condition he was in. And he was lying on a
mat that was not his name, could have been. It
is a name, but it's not his name. It's where
he is, not who he is. I'm gonna preach this, Lord.
(31:21):
I am going to preach this just like you showed me,
because it was so beautiful how the Lord showed me
in verse six. The key to all of this is
when Jesus saw him justin circle.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
The word him.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
Now contrasts that when Jesus walked by. There's a blind person.
There's a person who can't move. There's another person I'm
not sure of their condition. There's somebody who's only been
at the pool two weeks. Here's somebody who's been here
two years. Here's someone who has been here thirty eight years.
I'm speaking to somebody today, and this is not your
first day in this situation.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
This is not your first frustration.
Speaker 3 (32:02):
That's all right, because the Bible says that Jesus saw him.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
I still got to show you what I mean.
Speaker 3 (32:10):
It says that Jesus saw him lying there. Now, if
you fast forward, when the man gets up, the religious
leaders see the man, but they see him a little differently.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
They label him differently.
Speaker 3 (32:25):
They label him according to his condition, and they label
him according to their expectation. The Sabbath was supposed to
be a day of no work, but they see him
carrying a mat. The Sabbath was not a day where
you can't make up your bed. The Sabbath was a
day where you couldn't do commerce in the city. But
they've twisted it, they have labeled it. Their label has
(32:47):
become a lie. Did you know that religion will always
try to label something that the Lord gave you, and
instead of using it to lift a burden, it will
create one. So you begin to see God as the
person who's perpetually disappointed in you.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
God is not disappointed in you.
Speaker 3 (33:04):
How can he be disappointed in what he appointed? If
he called you, that means he knew you would be
in this situation before you were in this situation. You
think you can surprise God. You think God's like I
wish I would have done a scouting report on them.
You think God is somehow mesmerized by your weakness? Now
people are People are very different the religious leaders in
(33:26):
verse ten, they have their focus somewhere completely different.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
The Bible says that the.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed,
it is the Sabbath, the law forbids.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
You to carry your mat. Now, ho on, I'm confused.
Speaker 3 (33:42):
They are looking at a man and they are talking
about a mat. How can they only see the mat
and not the man? No, no, no, I'm honestly asking
how can they see a man who has never walked before?
Speaker 1 (34:05):
If he's thirty eight years old. Maybe he did walk a.
Speaker 3 (34:08):
Little while before those thirty eight years, we don't know.
But for almost forty years he hasn't been able to walk.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
And he's walking and they.
Speaker 3 (34:18):
Walk up to him and say, hey, you can't do that, and.
Speaker 4 (34:23):
He's like, I know. I didn't think I could either.
Speaker 3 (34:28):
But I met a man had he walked by me
that he stopped for me.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
Keeddy talked to me.
Speaker 4 (34:34):
Eddy told me that get up God, take it up
and walk. He I'm walking in the power of his words.
Speaker 7 (34:43):
And I'm walking in the potential of a brighter tomorrow
and I'm living in the life.
Speaker 4 (34:51):
Of a new day.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
I'm just speculating.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
I think this man started singing at this point. I
think he started singing, look at what the Lord has done.
Speaker 4 (35:04):
I'm never going back to the way.
Speaker 3 (35:08):
That's why I got my mat, because I'm not going
back saying, not going back, saying, not going back.
Speaker 4 (35:15):
Give on my spot cause.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
I'm cause I'm take my man because I'm all right.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
We need to work on y'all's rhythm and call it
the spot.
Speaker 8 (35:30):
My man is walking, and you're talking about a math.
I'm a practice. You're talking about a mac. I'm a man.
Speaker 3 (35:41):
You can't see the man for the math. And it
makes me wonder, what's your mat that I can't see?
That's got you magnifying mind? This man has to be singing.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
Carrying a mat.
Speaker 3 (36:01):
He's not going back to the place he's been for
thirty eight years.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
That isn't working anymore. Man, he's happy too.
Speaker 3 (36:11):
He's happy carrying that man because he's holding something that's
been holding him his whole life.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
Boy, he's happy. He turns around. Goodbye.
Speaker 3 (36:26):
Yes today five covered colonades. Goodbye colonades, y'all missed it.
Speaker 4 (36:35):
I'm living in the line of a new day.
Speaker 6 (36:39):
I won't waste another then in on my oldways.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
Praise the Lord.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
He's not even saved yet, not even born again. He
don't even know it is Jesus yet. He doesn't find
that out until later.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
See.
Speaker 3 (36:56):
Sometimes God does it now, but you pray.
Speaker 4 (37:00):
Later because you didn't even know he was doing it.
Speaker 3 (37:05):
That's the tide I feel God saying, praise.
Speaker 5 (37:09):
Me now and I'll explain it later.
Speaker 3 (37:17):
My man is walking talking about I'm dancing on the
I'm carry and the mat that I want Slade on
Carrie and the mat that I want Slade carry and
the mat that I want.
Speaker 6 (37:30):
Slade or carrying the mat.
Speaker 4 (37:34):
I mean this man ain't heavy.
Speaker 3 (37:35):
Carrie in the batter carry.
Speaker 4 (37:40):
Yeah, you can't do that. You can't do that, Yes
I can.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
We're not doing the stairs. Get up, and here's the pharisee.
Speaker 3 (37:51):
He's like, carrying the mat, you can't do that. No,
you're doing it wrong, carrying that I want.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
You can't do that.
Speaker 6 (38:03):
No, you're doing it wrong, carrying the men where I.
Speaker 3 (38:07):
Used to like, you can't do that because this is
the wrong day.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
No, we got confrontation.
Speaker 4 (38:18):
Y'all don't know how to act in church?
Speaker 3 (38:21):
What kind of churches? What kind of churches?
Speaker 7 (38:25):
This this is the house my mercy.
Speaker 4 (38:30):
This is a place stark gray. This is a place
where I am not what I did.
Speaker 3 (38:40):
I am not what I was.
Speaker 5 (38:43):
I am who fled.
Speaker 6 (38:47):
Said by, can't do that, can't do that, just no way,
can't do that new loop.
Speaker 1 (39:08):
I listen to that.
Speaker 9 (39:10):
Man said, I'm making this up on the car, off
the cough. I don't know if it's any good. But
they said, the law says you can't. The man said,
the word says.
Speaker 1 (39:33):
Otherwise. Somebody shout otherwise otherwise.
Speaker 3 (39:40):
And the hand of the Lord was upon me, and
he took me down to the valley, and the valley
was full of bones, and they were very dried. And
the bones said death, and the bones said over. But
the word said otherwise, And God said, proph aside to
(40:02):
the poems, prophosy to the marriage, prophesie to the bankruptcy,
prophosy to the depression, proph aside to the blindness, proph
aside to the lameness, A prophesie to your legs. I
propheside to your righteousness in Christ. I prophesy, there is
(40:25):
a better word than condemnation.
Speaker 5 (40:29):
Shame said died, But God said.
Speaker 7 (40:33):
Bo, I'm dancing on the grind. I'm dancing on the
grasd I'm dancing on the grass.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
You can't do that. You can't dance in church. You
can't be happy you're going through hell.
Speaker 4 (41:07):
I might be in it, but it is not in me.
I'm not my mad. I'm not my mad. I'm not
my bad decision. I'm not my shame. I'm not see abuse.
Speaker 1 (41:26):
I'm not my past.
Speaker 4 (41:28):
I'm not myself.
Speaker 9 (41:31):
I am.
Speaker 3 (41:33):
No what he loves.
Speaker 4 (41:35):
I'm for what he stopped five for. And I'm dass
then on the grad.
Speaker 7 (41:42):
I'm dascing on the grave.
Speaker 4 (41:46):
I'm bassing.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
You can't death, you got moves.
Speaker 4 (41:52):
Show me your church dass yet, I'm on your feet
and pray for shut up in hot.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
You can't do that. You can't dance on a grave.
You can't get beauty for ashes.
Speaker 3 (42:20):
You can't be grateful when you still got a kid
who's far away from God.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
You can't keep worshiping through tears.
Speaker 3 (42:28):
You can't keep trusting that God is good through cancer.
Speaker 4 (42:32):
You can't do that.
Speaker 3 (42:34):
But the word.
Speaker 4 (42:36):
Says otherwise.
Speaker 5 (42:39):
I said, no words set otherwise, the stone set dead,
but no word says right.
Speaker 10 (42:55):
Get up, get up, get up, get out of gray,
get up, get up, get get up, get up, get up, get.
Speaker 4 (43:06):
Up, see awesome.
Speaker 2 (43:20):
Get Thank you for joining us. Special thanks to those
of you who give generously to this ministry. Is because
of you that this ministry is possible. You can click
the link in the description to give now or visit
Elevation Church dot org slash podcast for more information and
(43:40):
if you enjoyed the podcast, you can subscribe.
Speaker 1 (43:43):
You can share it with your friends.
Speaker 2 (43:45):
You can click the share button, take a screenshot and
share it on your social stories and tag us at
Elevation Church.
Speaker 1 (43:50):
Thanks again for listening. God bless you.
Host
Steven Furtick
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Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com