Jesus Loves the Broken - Part A

People can get broken. Jesus loves broken people. Why is this important. This is important because as Gordon MacDonald once wrote a single human being is the most beautiful of the most valuable and potentially the most powerful thing God ever created, so if they get broken that can impede God's purpose and plan for that person's life, we will experienced a broken heart to some degree, but if you look anywhere other than to God. You will likely stay in that state of brokenness today on connect with skip-Skip helps you see that God can heal your wounds before we begin, we want to let you know about a resource that gives you practical insight on how to love others like Jesus people everywhere having not given need to be loved, but sadly sometimes the people who need love the most the most rejected here. Skip, I think we all crave love. We will do sometimes almost anything to get it to know that we are loved by somebody else unconditionally.

No wonder that better than Jesus love the worst of sinners.

You love the best of saints Jesus. So the love of God in human flesh we want to give you a glimpse of God's relentless love for all people including you by sending you the Jesus loves people for booklet collection by skip. I think all four Jesus loves people titles including Jesus loves the broken RR thanks for your gift of $25 or more today to help connect more people to God's love through his word connectwithskip.com/offer to give online securely or call 892 1888 John chapter 5 Skip hike to get into today's message I brought with me today. A camera you can tell by looking at those who can see it is a very old one that will make these things anymore. This is called an Argus C3 camera.

It was a very inexpensive mass-produced rangefinder camera made out of Bakelite so that will dated manufactured from between 1939 in 1966 and this camera is broken, it doesn't work anymore, but it's special to me and I have it because this was my father's camera and so all of the early photographs that he took of my mother and their honeymoon in the family were all done on this little camera until it broke and it broke just because it was used and worn out, and he had push that button one too many times and people can get like this, people can get worn out, and you stop and there's enough people that will push their buttons, one too many times they get broken if you're a member of the human race. You know what it's like to be broken to some degree may be a broken heart. Maybe somebody in a relationship broke your heart. A few years back, a national newspaper decided to do a special set of articles on people that were suffering from a broken heart and so they asked pastors in the area to submit names in the local community of those that they knew had a broken heart newspaper would find them and interview them and write their story. One insightful pastor sent to the newspaper the telephone directory for Nashville. In other words, who doesn't have a broken heart to some degree, but then there are those who more than just being heard or having a broken heart because of life circumstances, we would say that person is a broken person Malcolm Muggeridge once wrote the biggest disease today is the feeling of being unwanted uncared for deserted by everybody. The greatest evil is the lack of love and charity. The terrible indifference towards one neighbor who lives at the roadside, assaulted by exploitation corruption, poverty and disease. Today, our study is Jesus loves the broken and that's because he does. We know that he does because he announced that one of the reasons he came to this earth was to heal the brokenhearted, he has sent me. Jesus said in the synagogue at Nazareth. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted door brokenhearted is an interesting word because it literally speaks of rubbing against something and it was a word used for kindling a fire where you would take two sticks and rub them together so fiercely that he would ignite a flame so the word came to mean a person crushed or broken to pieces. And that's because life robs so hard sometimes against some people's lives that the end result is they are broken hearted. They are crushed by those things will how do you love a broken person. How did Jesus love a broken person is an important to love those who are broken, my father had many sayings that he would quote and there were dinner times where I would just roll my eyes and go there goes dads do that and they have the right to do that but I remember my dad one of his favorite sayings was the God helps those who help themselves and he would even say you know the Bible says God helps those who help themselves, not government that in the Bible.

In fact, I did a little digging and found that it was Benjamin Franklin who is credited with saying that Aeneas quoted in the 1757 edition of poor Richard's almanac. So that's where that comes from we discover in our study today in the fifth chapter of John is God doesn't help those who help themselves. He helps those who can't help themselves. There is a man who is unable to do something for himself.

Until Jesus comes along and heals this man and there's two overarching truths in John chapter 5 there on your worship diagram today. People can get broken and Jesus loves broken people.

People can get broken. Jesus loves broken people. Why is this important. This is important because as Gordon McDonald once wrote a single human being is the most beautiful. The most valuable and potentially the most powerful thing God ever created, so if they get broken that can impede God's purpose and plan for that person's life. People can get broken. Let's see how John five beginning in the first verse. After this there was a feast of the Jews and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there is in Jerusalem by the sheep gate a pool which is called in Hebrew Bethesda, having five porches in these that is in these porches. They are great multitude of sick people blind lame paralyzed waiting for the moving of the water for an angel went down at a certain time into the pool and stirred up the water. Then whoever stepped in first. After the stirring of the water was made well whatever disease he had a certain man was there who had an infirmity 38 years when Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been in that condition a long time.

He said to him do you want to be made well the sick man answered him, sir. I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up while I am coming, another steps down before me. Jesus said to him, rise, take up your bed and walk all of us are aware that no matter where we go in this world. You can find broken people, whether you go to Syria or Syracuse whether you find yourself in Afghanistan or Albuquerque, whether you're in Iraq or Indianapolis, whether you're in Paris, France or Paris Texas you're gonna find people who have been broken broken people and a person could be broken.

A number of ways. They can be broken spiritually.

Most all people are. You can be broken emotionally. Many people, to some degree are you can be broken physically, and you can get broken by experiences that happen to you in life by how other people mistreat you in life or by making wrong choices yourself over time. As one author said life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that and living alone won't either. For solitude will break you with its yearning to the matter where you go in this life.

There is the possibility of being broken a marriage that didn't work out and then another marriage that didn't work out or being abused and abandoned by parents or being abused and abandoned by children. I disease an accident that renders one limited in their physical capacities. You can be betrayed by someone hurtful words can be spread by people who talk against you and about you. Proverbs 18 asked the question the spirit of a man will sustain them in sickness.

But who can bear a broken spirit and the thing about brokenness is you can always see it by looking at a person was shocked last year when we heard that Robin Williams had taken his life. This talented actor whenever he was interviewed was so full of humor, so funny, but there was a dark side to his life, broken marriages, he struggled with depression for years and some believe he was in the early stages of Parkinson's disease. Substance abuse in his life and those of us who didn't know him well had no idea. So here's the deal. Right now in this room. People surrounding you. We don't know what is going on in their life. We don't know what they're carrying as they come in. There may be a sense of helplessness that they feel because of it.

Let's look out. This man was broken. There's three ways in which I submit to you this was a broken man. First of all, he is broken by his circumstance. We know we sick verse five says he had an infirmity that we don't know exactly what that infirmity was.

It means a debilitating illness. Whatever was he was either paralyzed or he was too weak to be able to move freely because whenever something happened at the pool. He couldn't get in. In time everybody else would beat him to the punch and so he had the circumstance of being physically ill, and I will tell you this that physical ailments, especially chronic disease has a way of isolating a person and making them feel so utterly alone. They begin to realize their unable to do what they used to do they understand their physical capabilities have been paired way, way down and then they find that their friends will invite them less and less the functions because of their physical disabilities and they just feel more and more isolated now with this man were not told how old he was.

He could have been much older than 38 years. We know His disease longer lingered that long, but he could have been much older and that this was an onset condition that came later on, which means that we don't know there's the possibility that this man was married or married one time, there is no record of his life.

And I say that because so often when there is this circumstance of being broken by physical disease.

It puts an enormous amount of pressure on the marriage relationship. 75% of marriages where there is chronic illness, and in divorce 75% and that is because the spouse the caregiver is frightened at the prospect of long term care and 75% of the time will flee the marriage so circumstances can rob against a person's life and rendering that person crushed broken.

E. Stanley Jones some of you have heard the name of that great missionary to India so that he knew of the pastor who prepared a series of 10 sermons and they were was a series called how to avoid a nervous breakdown before he had finished the 10th message. He had one.

He had one himself broken by circumstances in his life. Something else I'd like you to notice as you look at your Bibles in verse three. This man was broken by people not want you to see this in these porches in this pool of Bethesda and I'll describe that to you in Jerusalem. There lay a great multitude of sick people. So there's a place where they just stuck sick people or allowed them to congregate there is a great multitude of sick people blind, lame, paralyzed waiting for the moving of the water is important you know that in ancient cultures. They did a lousy job of caring for the sick.

They did not have programs like we have today. If you were sick.

Back then, if you were broken back then you would either become a beggar in the streets, or at the gates or you simply congregate where people knew the sick people work in this pool of Bethesda. Now the pool of Bethesda and there is evidence of it.

Still to this day was about 2 feet maybe 3 feet deep. This large rectangular pool by the sheep gate because they would bring sheep into the city and they would clean them up and get them ready for sacrifice, but were told there was a great multitude of sick people. One commentator suggests that you probably find about 300 of them every day in that place but on festival times like this great feast where people would gather to Jerusalem, you would find about 3000 sick people congregating together now.

It doesn't take a great imagination to envision what this would look like and what this would smell like you've ever visited a Third World country hospital and your scene. Sometimes two patients per bed in a little single bed. They don't even know each other but they're put in the same bed and their families are camped around on the floor. Cooking food for them what it looks like sounds like and smells like I've experienced it reminds me of what I read here know why were they there will speaks about the moving of the water.

Evidently there was some subterranean spring that fed this pool because the water to bubble up every now and then and so people thought it was an angel that did that and that's why it is written by the way, though it is written in your Bibles this way in the most ancient manuscripts. It doesn't say the angel stirred up the water so it is believed that a scribe in trying to do to describe to us what people believed in that day, said it was an angel that that it either way, people congregated there in hopes of finding healing Bethesda is a word that means the house of mercy. It's ironic because it would become a house of misery were a great multitude had gathered together, but I'm bringing this to your attention because this is how many broken people feel they feel just like they did in ancient times that our culture doesn't do a very good job in taking care of them.

They feel isolated. They feel they feel shelved.

Sort of like this camera here.

This camera ordinarily sits on a shelf at home. It's a remind me of my past, my father, but that's all it is a disorder since there broken on the shelf for me to walk by and be amused by and people who are homeless feel like there on the shelf. People walk by them and are amused by the AIDS victims often feel there on the shelf. People walk by and are amused by those in nursing homes feel like there on the shelf. People walk by either amused by the there's no real involvement or care.

They feel broken by people. This man broken by circumstance broken by people and also he was broken by time verse five.

I just want the that the length of time to settle into our hearts, a certain man was there who had an infirmity almost 4 decades, 38 years. The next verse says Jesus saw him and knew that he had been in that condition along time there's a man on whom time it had taken its toll. Not only had his he been broken by the circumstance of disease and broken by the relegation of a place by people, but he got up every single day that the same reality so that his helplessness turned into hopelessness whatever hope he had of getting better, had vanished decades before this was is this daily hopeless routine.

Sometimes people say what you know time heals all wounds. No it does not.

Sometimes the longer the time Pro tracks and elongates. It feels like eternity upon eternity to a person in this condition, and they spiraled downward from helplessness to hopelessness have appreciated the honesty of Paul the apostle in second Corinthians, when he said he had suffered beyond the ability to endure so that we despaired even of life but always cut me off guard. It's like, that's Paul despairing of life.

What could happen to while he goes on his honesty is unveiled in chapter 11 of that book. He says I have labored and toiled and I have often gone without sleep. I have known hunger and thirst, and I have often gone without food. I have been cold and naked, and besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches.

It's that daily pressure. Day after day week after week. That adds up. It takes its toll and it finds a person crushed like the psalmist said, my tears have been my food day and night crushed Rob down by circumstances by people by time and how is brokenness expressed well a number of different ways. Depression is one anger is another substance abuse will be true for others. Others will be antisocial in their behavior.

Others will be suicidal in their thinking and others will self injure cutting self injury number of different ways it's done.

But basically it's when a person has the emotional problems that are so pronounced they feel they can't share they can put it into words. They can articulate the amount of grief or shame or hurt or anger they feel. And it hurts so badly emotionally that they resort to self injury physically because it takes their mind off the other pain when I go to a dentist new start putting this stuff in my mouth. The needles and the drills often pinch my finger so hard to saw think about a different hurt people who live like that.

I let see how Jesus loves this man.

How does he approach this memo we know he heals them so that's the great part of it but there's something else that I want you to see how Jesus handles the broken how he approaches a broken person because this is what we ought to do.

First of all, Jesus is observed to him compassionately. He observed him compassionately. Verse six is really striking says now a certain man who had been there, who had an infirmity 38 years when Jesus saw him lying there out of this huge measurable crowd. Jesus sees one guy, he saw the Molly knew them all. But he zeroes in on one person, one solitary human being. He saw him, and this is really the great story of Jesus he was able to speak to crowds and move crowds and people would say after he would speak never man spoke like this man and yet you could get him one-on-one. He would be so individual and engaging with Nicodemus or the woman at the well where this needy man here in our store, loving the broken begins by how we see the broken by how we observe that the message from his series, Jesus loves people now use Skip to share how you can help keep this broadcast going strong, connecting more people like you to the gospel of Jesus.

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