True Acceptance

Read John 5:16-27. 

How many of you did something that was an opportunity to serve someone else this week? Or something that might have been out of your comfort zone?

What is the best birthday party you have ever had? Or been to? 

• Presents 
• Decorations  
• Cake 
• Activities 
• People

Birthdays are something that we all have in common. What is something else that we have in common? 

• Death.

Who has been to a funeral before?

{Here I inserted a personal humorous story about a funeral I went to my first week living in the South. It was a very peculiar experience for me, so I told my class about it, to get them laughing.}

Even if we have nothing else in common with somebody, there are two things for sure that we have in common with them – birth and eventually death.

Jesus was human just like us, so He did these common, normal things. He was born and he died. But what was it that He did that was so uncommon?

• He rose from the dead.

This action totally set him apart from the rest of mankind. No one else was able to raise themselves from the dead.

What was it about Jesus that enabled Him to rise from the dead?

• He was God.

Ok, so keep that in mind…

Let’s look at John 5:1-15.

Jesus was in Jerusalem at the pool of Bethesda. It was just a particular location where certain types of people gather – these people all just happened to have various illnesses and diseases. They hoped that this pool would heal them if the waters were rocky.

More or less, this information would be like somebody walking into church this morning and asking where they could find all of the 7-9^th grade girls. Obviously you would find them in the gym because that is where their Sunday school class is located, and all of their friends are located, and where they have fun.

So here at this pool, Jesus decided to heal a certain man who had been sick for 38 years. Can you imagine? None of us have even been alive that long! But he was sick for 38 years and had been waiting by that pool to be healed, but he was too old, slow, and sick to get into the pool in time.

Jesus knew that this man had been waiting for that long, and healed the man. How exciting! That would be awesome!  Everyone around should have been really excited.

Except for one small thing… It was against the law to heal people on the Sabbath. It seems like a silly rule to us, but it was a big deal to them. So Jesus just broke the law, and everyone is holding their breath.

Then Jesus tells this man to pack up his stuff and go home. This was also against the law.

Then to top everything off, Jesus forgave the man of his sins. Fortunately this wasn’t against the law, but it was heresy, which is even worse.

Why was this heresy?

• Because only God had the ability to forgive sins and the Pharisees didn't believe that Jesus was God. 

Then the Pharisees get wind of it… like they always seem to do… and they were not happy. Jesus broke the law at least twice, and he claimed the authority of God when he forgave the man of his sins. Not good.

Read John 6:16-27.

In this moment, Jesus claimed to be the Son of God. He condemned the Pharisees for condemning Him and His father. He announced that he had the ability to forgive sins.

He offered to every person who was standing there listening and to each of us something extraordinary – true acceptance in Christ. Forgiveness of sins. In God’s eyes perfection. The opportunity to stand in God’s presence as one of his children.

With this He added something that we can have in common, birth, death, and salvation.

So … now that we have something else in common, we already talked about birthdays. Is there anyone who would be wiling to share how they got saved?

{At this time, several of my girls shared their testimony with the rest of the class. It was really exciting because they had heard my testimony before, but never shared. It made our class a little more personal.}