Creflo Dollar - I'm A Victim of Legalism
We continue our study on the book of John, pulling out of it all of the amazing things that John saw concerning the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ and this revelation of grace. And so tonight, we're gonna deal with something pretty interesting. In John chapter 5, you see very clearly this contrast between the grace of God and something called legalism. It's a term that when I first heard it, I wasn't too sure what it was talking about. I thought maybe some dude in the church made it up, but it has a lot of significance, and it's gonna really help you to see whether or not you, you know, you go back and forth between grace and legalism, and it'll help you to understand how God can do some amazing things in your life if you'll understand what that is all about.
So if you would, let's go to the book of John. Let's see, where am I? John chapter 5, and we're gonna read verse 1 through 17 in the NLT, John chapter 5 and we're gonna read verses 1 through 17 in the NLT Bible. Okay, so he says here, now listen, this is a great story, and he says here, "Afterwards Jesus returned to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish holy days. Inside the city, near the Sheep Gate, was the pool of Bethesda". Everybody say "Bethesda". That's interesting, that word means "the house of mercy," that's the meaning of Bethesda. I thought that was so cool, so they gathered in the House of Mercy, Bethesda, "with five covered porches. Crowds of sick people, blind, lame, or paralyzed, lay on the porches". They're in the house of mercy. "One of the men lying there had been sick for thirty-eight years".
Now, 38 years is also equivalent to how long the children of Israel wandered in the wilderness, so there's gonna be a connection here. Next verse, "When Jesus saw him and knew he had been ill for a long time, he asked him, 'Would you like to get well?'" Now, think about it. If Jesus came up to you, you've been sick for 38 years, and he asked you, "Would you like to be well"? How would you answer that question? Just that simple, right? "Yes, yes, sir, absolutely," you know, check this dude out. He asked him, "Would you like to be get well"? He says, "I can't, sir". Well, he's been sick for 38 years. "'Would you like to get well?' 'I can't, sir,' the sick man said, 'for, I have no,'" watch this, "For I have no one to put me into the pool when the water bubbles up. Someone else always gets there ahead of me".
Huh. Oh, that's so amazing, I hope you see it already before I even tell you, "I ain't got nobody to put me in the pool". You've been sick for 38 years, why? "I ain't got nobody to put me in the pool". All right, watch this now. "Jesus told him, 'Stand up, pick up your mat,'" or that was his bed, "'Stand up, pick up your mat, and walk! Now, instantly the man was healed! He rolled up his sleeping mat and began walking! But this miracle happened on the Sabbath, so the Jewish leaders objected". I mean, forget the fact, the man who been sick for 38 years just got healed. They objected because you did it on the Sabbath. "They said to the man who was cured, 'You can't work on the Sabbath! The law doesn't allow you to carry that sleeping mat!'"
Now, I'm gonna show you a little later on, they stoned a man to death because according to the law, you couldn't do it, they stoned a man to death for picking up sticks on the Sabbath. "But he replied, 'The man who healed me told me, "Pick up your mat and walk".' 'Who said such a thing as that?' they demanded. The man didn't know, for Jesus had disappeared into the crowd. But afterwards," and I just love it so much, Jesus is not waiting around for somebody to give him approval. "But afterwards Jesus found him in the temple and told him, 'Now you're well; so stop sinning, you well now; so stop sinning or something even worse may happen to you.' Then the man went and told the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus," look at that, "who had healed him. So the Jewish leaders began harassing Jesus for breaking the Sabbath rules. But Jesus replied, 'My Father is always working, and so I am,'" or, "so am I".
Now, I wanna deal with the first 17 verses. If we get to the rest, we can. And one of the things that I'm seeing here is that grace does not only provide life for all of us, but a more abundant life. Please understand, grace provides abundant life for us, and to do so, in order for grace to provide abundant life for us, we got to be delivered from the helplessness of life as people lived it under the law principle, they lived it under the law principle. Now, the house of mercy, that's Bethesda, all those who were in that house, they have not received all that grace has for them. So when Jesus asked this guy, "Wilt thou be made whole"? he said something that I hope you caught, he said, "Sir, I ain't got nobody to put me in the pool".
Now, it was bigger than that because when the water is troubled, he says in verse 6 and 7, and I'll repeat that again in verse 6 and 7, he said, "when the water is troubled, I don't have any man to put me into the pool, but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me," verse 6 and 7. So these 38 years, this guy has been wasting away. Wow, why was he wasting away according to his own words? Because of the failure of human strength and human help. He's wasting away because of human strength and human help. In other words, he had been depending upon self and others, he's dependent on somebody else and others, not God, he's depending on self and he's depending on others.
Now, I wanna look at, just hold a pen right there, the 38 years that Israel under the leadership of Moses wondered aimlessly in the wilderness and God commanded them at Kadesh. It's in Deuteronomy 2:14, he commanded them to turn back. He told them to go back into the wilderness, and then it says, "until all the generations of the men of war were wasted out from among the host". So, according to Deuteronomy 2:14, let's go in the wilderness because you all are self dependent. Let's get everybody in there until all of that has been wasted away, and in those 38 years under the leadership of Moses the lawgiver, there was a wasting away, it was a period of impotence, helplessness when nothing was accomplished for 38 years. It was all due, listen to this, to the fact that at Kadesh, when God commanded them to enter the Promised Land, here's what happened, Israel had looked at their own manpower and failed to depend upon God to undertake and to help them out.
They faced the conquest, they forgot about that, the conquest of Canaan on the basis of the law principle, of dependance upon self, instead of what? Dependence upon God, it's dependence-upon-God principle. So they had forgotten how God in his mercy had turned around and delivered them from the Egyptians and how he beared them on eagle's wings, according to Exodus chapter 19:4, and brought them to himself. Now, you remember in Exodus, when the Word of the Lord came from the mountain and God says, I want you to do this, and they said, we are well able to do everything you said, and then after that, all hell broke loose because again, the issue was depending upon human strength and not depending upon God. And so, this helplessness, this man who was in the house of mercy and had wasted away for 38 years because he had nothing but man in which to trust in, nothing but man to trust in or self.
I mean, he might as well have said, according to Galatians 3:3, he might as well said, you know, in fact go there, Galatians, I wanna show you this, Galatians 3:3 in the NLT. Galatians 3:3, because what he did is exactly what Galatians 3:3 says. He says, "How foolish can you be? After starting your new lives in the Spirit, why are you now trying to become perfect by your own human effort"? You started life in the Spirit and now you're trying to become perfect through your own human effort. That describes religion today, that describes the church today. We somehow, after we started in the Spirit, somehow we allowed ourselves to go back to that old way of thinking, trying to deal with things depending more are on human effort, somebody else, trusting what somebody else does, and we don't even realize that we're not depending and trusting on God.
I tell you, this whole thing that we're going through right now is trying to get us to a place where we drive out that toxic spirit of self-dependence and learn how to depend on God in everything. So let's look at another type real quick as Joshua, that's a type Christ, okay? Joshua is the type Christ, led Israel into the Promised Land after the death of Moses, just like Joshua did. They didn't get in when Moses left, so Joshua led them to the Promised Land. So Jesus delivered this impotent man from his state of wasting. This, ladies and gentlemen, is grace, God's abounding provision in love for him who will depend on him and trust in him. God wants to do some amazing things in our lives if we can, I won't say if we can depend on him, I'm gonna say if we can start practicing depending on him, okay?
If you'll start practicing, if you can just, in your everyday walk with God, become consciously aware, say it out loud if you have to, become consciously aware, "Today I'm gonna depend on God". Some of us are very tempted to depend on our intellect, depend on who we know, depend on the fact that we've done this before, depend on the fact that we've done this for 20 or 30 years, and it really takes a conscious effort to say, "Lord, show me how to depend on you," because what happens is he's training us right now. So when these crazy times get hit (well, they're already here), but when these crazy times show up in your life, you're already conditioned in depending on God, not just with our mouths.
We, as Christians, we do a lot of things with our mouth that don't translate in our life, okay? And we're talking about translating this stance, it's a faith stance depending on God, I depend on God, but now you have to balance it. Like this Sunday, I'm gonna talk about grace and faith in the midst of discomfort because some people get the idea that you just let things happen, you just sit there and get beat up. No, no, no, you're fighting a good fight of faith. You're not just sitting there and let the devil beat you up, you're not sitting there and let suffering beat you up. You're standing against it, that's where the growth comes from. There's got to be some resistance, glory to God, you have to resist it.
The Bible says, "Submit yourself to God, resist the devil". So if he's coming at you or if trouble's coming at you, you gotta resist it, and a lot of Christians, they either go, we love going to the extreme on one end or to the extreme on the other end, and we don't find that middle ground. Well, nobody, you know, it's like you get a truth and then you erase everything else you ever learned, you know? You don't wanna do that, you get the truth and you say, all right, I know this is a victory that overcomes the world, even my faith. I know my faith is dependent on God, I know it's important for me to maintain the right attitude, to maintain the right stance. I know it's important that, you know, my part of suffering is maintaining the victory that Jesus died to obtain. I'm gonna do all of that and still know that when I come out of this discomfort, I'm gonna be better than I was before.
It's not a matter of, God doesn't throw bad things at you to make you better, we ain't talking about that, okay? We're talking about, it's gonna come 'cause you who are Christians, you who are godly gonna suffer persecution. So since it is gonna come, let it meet somebody that's been conditioning their lives in depending on God. Let them meet somebody that says, all right now, I'm in this thing, but I'm not just gonna sit in here and let you beat me up. I'm gonna pull up the name of Jesus, praying in English, praying in tongues, I'm gonna pull up the scriptures, I'm gonna pull up my Psalms, I'm gonna lift my hands, I'm gonna worship, I'm doing all of that, the training, listen, you're not gonna get physically in shape by showing up in the weight room and just sitting down.
Same thing in the place of discomfort. When discomfort comes, it shows up but you're ready for a fight, you ready for a fight. We get the idea of what discomfort is here, let's just be satisfied and we gonna grow as a result of it. Not if you're not pressing away, not if you're not resisting, I said I wasn't gone holler now, I wanted to be like some of those preachers I see on television. They so smooth, you know, "You know, and the Bible says this and, you know, we have to do this, and I'm like, Lord, how come I just can't just do like that, you know? You know, Bethesda, it means the house of mercy and in the house of mercy, then we understand that we do that. You know, there's another thing I'd like you to know," I try to do that. I can't, it don't, I ain't like that. I'm a screamer, you understand what I'm saying?
I came up in Collipark, wasn't nobody, it wasn't a quiet... You heard arguments two houses down, amen? So to those who are bound by the law, then grace is restricted and it's limited by the law. Now, we gotta get into this legalism, so follow me now. The work of grace appears to be judged by the legalist, and they do it based on the law. So let me give you some, I worked out a definition and hope it'll satisfy our understanding, but let's look at a few things about legalism. What is it? Let's see how the dictionary defines it first and then I'm gonna apply to where we are, where grace is concerned.
First of all, legalism, it is a doctrine, when I say doctrine, I mean teaching. Legalism is a teaching that salvation is gained through good works. So legalism is you have to do good works in order to gain something that the New Testament says is free, but legalism says you got to have some good works. It is the judging of conduct in terms of the adherence to the precise laws, so your conduct is being judged based on whether you are keeping or walking in certain laws. Basically, legalism focuses on God's law more than the relationship you have with God. So if you meet a Christian and they're focused more on what the law said, "Well, the law says you shouldn't do that or the law said you shouldn't let it... see that? You got pants on, you ought to be wearing dresses".
They're focusing more on... and you see that even without me speaking to the law, you got a lot of people say, well, you know, "You saved, you shouldn't be doing that," why? Because that's what the Bible say. So you've taken even New Testament and turned it into legalism. So, legalism is you trying to live by the preciseness of the law and you don't have a relationship with God. Under the covenant of grace, the covenant of grace, the life of grace is based on a relationship with God. The life of grace is based on a relationship with God. That's why in today's society, for you to only concern yourself with the laws but not a relationship with God, you are gonna become a legalist, and everything you do is gonna be based on your own legalism. I mean, the fact that this guy got saved because he met Jesus and the legalists came up and said, yeah, but you did it on the Sabbath.
I mean, the dude's been sick for 38 years, you actually think God's got a problem with this happening? He doesn't now, he did then. See, before Jesus, you were punished and killed if you didn't keep the law, and that's why we got to rightly divide the law. So what we read here from these guys, they're still stuck in the law, okay? And rightfully so 'cause you're gonna see Jesus tell them, "All right, so first of all, y'all don't know the law real well because the law allows for good things to be done on the Sabbath," okay? So you're talking to Jesus who gave the law, so don't be telling him what the law said. He turned right back around and say, "No, no, you, you're wrong, you can do this".
But I wanted to teach on this tonight because I want you to amplify your relationship with God and understand because of Jesus, you're not living your life under the law. The Bible says in, I think Romans 6:14, we are not under the law, but we're under grace, but we keep living our lives, "I'm saved," so you still live your life by the law under the Old Covenant when Jesus has come to set you free from the law. And a lot of people don't think, "Well, What's the big deal? Why you keep saying that? All you do is make people mad in church". And all you're doing is staying in bondage and stopping this gift of grace from operating in your life, and you wanna ask the question, how come I have been in this for 38 years? Yeah, because you've been depending on the law and human effort.