Lest A Worse Thing Come John 5:14 Afterward Jesus found him in the temple, and said to him, See, you have been made well. Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon you. Like most people, Ive been through some bad things in the course of my life, from sickness, to unemployment, to family crises, and financial failures. There have been times of intense pain, deep distress, and crippling fear. I have lost many loved ones, been betrayed by those close to me, and seen my faith dry up and shrivel on the vine. Yet, in everything that ever happened, I always knew, at some level, that there was always hope, that things would always get better. If there comes a point in life when such a hope no longer exists for us, we can lose the very will to live. People can, and do, die of a broken heart, just as surely as with a bullet to the head. The crippled man at the pool of Bethesda had been coming there for many years, always clinging to the hope that one day things would be different, and he would be healed. Day after day, year after year, someone brought him there, and laid him by the pool, as he persisted in the forlorn hope that somehow he would make it into the pool when the angel stirred the waters. His hope was fulfilled in a way that he never expected, when Yeshua came and told him to get up and walk away with his bed, the pad he lay on. That should have been enough to make his life complete, yet when Yeshua saw him later, He gave the man one final admonition: “Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon you.” Short of death itself, what could be worse than waiting for thirty-eight years to be healed? Was Yeshua telling him that he would get some new disease, something even worse than what he had? Perhaps, but there are worse things than being physically or mentally sick. What Yeshua was saying is that the real problem in the mans life still needed to be addressed, the sin problem. We have no way of knowing whether some particular sin or sins contributed to the mans crippled condition, but the state of his body was a metaphor of sin. In spiritual terms, when we are lost we are deaf, blind, and crippled, unable to do anything pleasing to God. Even if our bodies are healed, if we remain the same on the inside, unsaved, the condition of our bodies is meaningless. The wages of sin is always death (Romans 6:23), and not just physical death, but spiritual death, for eternity. Besides death, though, there are many bad things that can happen in this life by our refusing to obey the admonition of Yeshua. If we made a list of every bad thing we could think of, many of them can and will happen to us whether we are saved or not. The difference is what occurs on the inside of us. How can we possibly obey the command to “sin no more”? By ourselves, we cant, but when Yeshua tells us to do, or not to do, something, all He wants is our agreement. The Holy Spirit supplies the strength, the power, and ability, as long as we are willing. It is that knowledge that we dont have to do everything ourselves that gives us hope. When we lose hope, it is because we realize that we cannot face life on our own, and if we dont have Christ in us, we have no more resources to draw on. Our only hope is in Yeshua; if we lose that, we lose everything. Prayer: Our hope is in Yeshua, Daddy God, and without Him, we have no hope. Let us be careful always to confess when we have sinned, forgive when we are wronged, and repent when we turn from You. We give You praise in glory in Yeshua, our righteousness. Amen!
Posted on: Wed, 09 Apr 2014 18:00:04 +0000
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