Wilt Thou Be Made Whole?

Brother Cecil duCille

September 7, 2003
(Published in Keeping in Touch March 21, 2004)

(For printable version click here.)

Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path (Psalm 119:105). Without the Words of God, we would be totally lost. We’re thanking God that there’s not just the written Word, but that there is a living Word that follows us, that walks with us and that talks with us. I remember times when I would open my mouth to say something that was wrong, that wasn’t going to please God and I’d get a shock right inside here. I had to shut up, or change the tune. I don’t know if some of you experience that. Somebody might get a shock in their big toe or somewhere else. I used to get it right here. I know that God has a living Word. I know that God has not just a living Word, but a Word for a people every time.

It says, “Where two or three are gathered together in My name…” In other words, “In the name of the Lord,” means with the nature of God, the nature of God to bring forth praise to glorify God, to bless people and to bless God. It said, “…anytime you are gathered together in MY name,” what happens? “I am there. I am there to bless and to do you good.” So that means that everybody here is going to receive a blessing. God has something for you this morning, and you just need to open your hearts. A little life came forth when we began to sing the song about opening your hearts. I remembered Psalm 24 that says, Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in (Psalm 24:7). It didn’t say MAY come in, you notice that? It didn’t say the King of glory may come in if you would open the door. It says that whenever you open the door, it’s a sure thing that the King of glory will come in! It says He SHALL come in.

Turn your Bibles with me to John, Brother John and chapter 5. Now, God set up the Word of God in such a way that we receive things in the natural and He makes it happen real natural. And then afterwards you receive it in the spiritual, and the reason why you receive it in the spiritual is because God is going to do something final, a fullness. So, we’re going to read about this man at the gate.

John 5:1, After this there was a feast of the Jews; and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. I believe that that feast was the feast of tabernacles. I believe it was the feast of tabernacles where God and man tabernacle together. The final tabernacle we see in Revelation. Turn with me, just hold on to John there, and turn to Revelation 21:3, And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. Now, that promise has been given over twenty times in the scriptures, and therefore we have liberty to change this word here. Instead of saying “with” we say “within.” Right? Because the promise is for within. If you want to see the promise, let us turn to Jeremiah 31. It’s actually just one of many. You know, I’ve gone through my Bible and put a special mark upon all these passages that speak about God dwelling within you and being your God and you being His people. And man, if you look at my Bible, it’s marked all over. This page alone has three marks. Okay, in verse 31, and of course I remember it by saying, “Thirty-one, thirty-one.” Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: Why did He say with the house of Israel and Judah? Isn’t Judah Israel? And aren’t the Jews a part of Israel? But there’s a reason. Jesus is Judah. Jesus Christ is of the tribe of Judah. And we have come in, in Judah. We, as Gentiles, have come into the Kingdom in the tribe of Judah. Hallelujah. He says here He will make a new covenant with this Judah tribe and also with Israel. So, it’s with the whole Israel, but specifically, it is with you. Judah. It means “praise.” Yadah means “praise.” I notice we couldn’t praise, but it means praise. Verse 32, Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the LORD: Such a husband! Could any of you be a husband like that? Walking through the wilderness, He covered them with a canopy of cloud. If they went fast, the cloud went fast. If they went slow, the cloud went slow. If they stopped, the cloud stopped. If one strayed away, a little cloud would be over him. How do I know that? Because they didn’t die. You can’t stay in that desert for twenty minutes without dying, getting a stroke. You have to have special equipment. He said He was with them as a husband. When they were hungry, what did He do? He sent manna from heaven. When they were thirsty, He had a rock walking with them. Can you imagine that? They traveled for a day, two days, and they are thirsty and there’s a rock there with water gushing out of it. Next day, they traveled again and there’s the same rock! Paul, interpreting the Word of God said, “That rock that followed them was Christ” (I Corinthians 10:4). Amen. Amen.

So the new covenant, now, that He is making with us, is a covenant of Christ, and it is a covenant of Christ not only in us, but with us! When you gather together in My name, I am there, I am one of you! I’m there, amen! We might not leave a chair for Him there, there aren’t many empty chairs here, amen, but Jesus is sitting down in one of these chairs. He is here with us, see? It’s a comforting thought to know that God will be with you. The Psalmist said, “Thy rod and thy staff” (Psalm 23:4). Sometimes He can only be with us with a rod. We’re too bad and so He has to whip us. But then His staff is there to comfort us.

Verse 33, But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts… I understand that when the Bible was translated into English, they only had something like, what, five thousand words? You will notice that there are some words in the Bible that are kind of rough, I’ll put it that way. They are kind of rough. In other words, I wouldn’t expect one of you brethren to come up here and say, “I’m going to preach certain passages.” And then you read out that passage as your lesson. You would have to use another word that sounds better. I don’t know if you understand what I’m saying. But you read your Bible and you will know that there are some words that you just couldn’t call it in English. But, it carries a meaning. They didn’t have the words. They say, “inward parts.” It is talking about our souls. …and write it in their hearts. That means to say that the very center of your being would pivot around the Word of God. Are you with me? Your soul is yours, amen! But now, your heart is the communion of the spirit and the soul together, and there’s a central point upon which you pivot, upon which you move that is called your heart. That heart was desperately wicked. The heart of man, that heart was desperately wicked. In other words, all your intentions were to do wrong, to please the devil, to please yourself, but God said that now He’s going to get to that heart. He’s going to do a work on the inside of people. It’s not difficult to find out who is saved from who is not saved. Oh yes. It’s not difficult because the person who is not saved will contemplate evil and execute it. If you are saved, you cannot contemplate evil and execute it. I don’t know if you get it straight. I want you to rub it in a little. A person who is not saved can come up here and say, “Thank God, I love Jesus. Thank God I am saved. Thank God I have been delivered, I have been blessed at such and such a time.” And that person is not saved. But that person will be able to contemplate evil. I remember a sister came to me and she said, “I am going to divorce my husband.” I said, “But you cannot. If you are walking with the Lord, you cannot divorce your husband and just do as you like like that.” She said, “Oh, yes, I can.” She said, “My God,” and she was saying, her God, as against MY God. You know? “My God is such a God, that anything I do, he will forgive me for it. I can just ask him for forgiveness.” I said, “No.” What did David call the sin? Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins (Psalm 19:13). You can’t commit presumptuous sin and still be saved. The person who is saved cannot commit a presumptuous sin, cannot deliberately say, “I am going to divorce that man and maybe marry him again.” Do you know what she did? She divorced him, she got the house, she got everything, and then she married him again. The poor, wretched man was helpless in her hands. He went back and married her again. What you think happened again? She divorced him again! She divorced him again! And then what? She married him again! So in time, she came to divorce him and I said, “Listen. You are playing your hand, you’re going to play yourself out. Though the man seems so malleable in your hand, there’s coming a point where he might just say, ‘This is it.’” That’s exactly what happened. When she tried to get him back again… I think she is trying up to now, to get him back, to marry him again, to divorce him again. But she is speaking in tongues and she’s preaching. She’s preaching the same Word that I am preaching and she is believing that she is a good Christian. I just pinch my side. I know she is not saved. You cannot be saved and commit sin. Did you hear that? He that is born of God cannot commit sin (I John 4:9). You notice the word that he used? Commit. Active verb. Deliberate action. Not fall into, but commit, deliberately commit sin. Not saved. Not born of God. Want to go back to Calvary and really make a proper job of it. Okay, we go back to John. That was a far straying. Amen.

John 5:3, In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water. Now, remember, I told you the Word of God is in three dimensions. We are looking at a natural dimension, something that actually happened and everything in that dimension has a meaning in the spiritual dimension, amen? So the moving of the waters by the angel of God, it’s what God speaks of in the scriptures as “times of refreshing shall come forth from the Lord” (Acts 3:19). There is a time when God will raise up His church. There is a time set in God’s calendar for God to raise the church up. Amen. In other words, we have been praying, and crying, and struggling for years. We want to get above a certain level. But we have never been able to get above that level and God is saying that there is a set time for the waters to be troubled.

Verse 4, For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had. A certain season. Now, whenever you see the scriptures speak of seasons, it is speaking of the Jewish calendar. God set a season in Israel for all the different things to happen. For instance, Passover. Passover is a certain season. How did the Passover come about (Exodus 12)? Do you remember? He said to Moses, “Let them stand with their loins girt about.” Ready. Like a man ready to take a journey. “And let them kill the lamb and eat it in the night.” Those people didn’t sit down at a table to eat. They were standing and eating like people who are eating in haste. They had a journey to take and God said, “Let this be the beginning of months for you.” The month Abib. On the first day of Abib they came out of Egypt. He said, “This is the Passover.” Now, there must be a lamb. Of course, sometimes I talk about the Lamb for the household. I did mention it in the previous word. But what God has been showing me is that God has a Lamb for every household. Amen. Jesus Christ the Lamb. We follow Jesus. We follow the Lamb withersoever He goeth (Revelation 14:4). A lamb was slain at midnight, at that special season, and now that season has to be fulfilled. Natural, spiritual, fullness. Now, the natural was the first of Abib. First of Abib. That’s the fifteenth of April, somewhere around there. Now, that’s the natural. The spiritual happened when Jesus Christ, the Lamb offered up Himself. It is such a mystery that the great students of the Bible could not get it. Only through the Spirit could they have gotten it. It so happens that the night before the Lamb should be offered, Jesus Christ called His disciples, and He said, “I must eat this Passover with you” (Luke 22:15). He was the Passover Lamb. A Lamb without spot, without blemish. No sin! No mistakes! Can you imagine a man not having made one little mistake in his life? You ask yourself the question, “Why did Jesus have to fast and pray? Why did Jesus have to pray so agonizingly, fast so much, keep so close to God?” He could not make any mistakes. He had to have the Spirit of God with Him for all of His thirty-three-and-a-half years. He had to do everything that the scriptures said He would do.

All right, so the season then. You know what I’m driving at? That we have gone through the natural, we have gone through the spiritual, and we must come to the fullness. Right? Good. The season.

Verse five, And a certain man was there, which had an infirmity thirty and eight years. A certain man. What does that mean? Not any man, but a special man. From the foundation of the earth, God created it, so that a special man… Yesterday, I touched on suffering. I said some people suffer because they took the wrong road. I didn’t elaborate on those who suffer who didn’t take the wrong road, but they suffered. You suffer for the Body. You suffer for a reason. You suffer because God wants a man to suffer in order to bring forth His glory! A certain man was ordained of God to be crippled and impotent and suffer for thirty-eight years! The years of our tribulation, don’t you understand? God said that that certain man would have his suffering for thirty-eight years at the pool of Bethesda. He needed to be delivered, my God. Amen. God has planted a vineyard and waited for the fruit. He has been waiting for six thousand years, and He has not got one fruit, except Jesus Christ. He said, “He is the first born from the dead” (Colossians 1:18). Jesus Christ the first fruit from the dead and WE will come into the first fruits company and become part. He said, “I will raise them up at the last day” (John 6:44). Yes. John 6:40, And this is the will of him that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the last day.

He had an infirmity thirty and eight years. John 5:6, When Jesus saw him lie, and knew that he had been now a long time in that case, he saith unto him, Wilt thou be made whole? Now, why did Jesus ask him that when Jesus actually knew what was going on? Jesus knew what was actually happening. I don’t think that poor man knew that he was chosen of God to be infirm and crippled. Can you see the man then playing the part of a lamb? This man was infirm and crippled because God wanted him to be infirm and crippled for thirty-eight years. God had Jesus Christ to come there to meet the infirm and crippled man at that specific point, at that specific time, at that very hour, at that very minute! Ordained of God from the foundation of the world. YOU! Yes. YOU! You people who sit here this morning are ordained of God from the foundation of the world to fulfill a certain position. If you don’t, then you are losers! Amen. But, before God, I pray that I will not be a loser. I would rather lose everything else, everything else in life right now, than to lose that appointment, that divine appointment with God that I should be there. Impotent as we are! Have you ever considered how impotent we are? Oh, you’re not impotent? Tell me what’s going to happen the next minute. We don’t even know. We can’t even see to the tip of our noses as far as spiritual things are concerned. We don’t know what’s going to happen the next minute. Amen. We are blind. We are deaf. All kinds of things are happening around us and we don’t know! Amen! You know, I went to God and I said, “Thank God. Thank you, Father, that I’m blind, I’m deaf, and I’m dumb.” Blind, deaf and dumb, crippled and can’t walk. Can’t run. Can’t do what I’d love to do, in the Spirit. Thank God! You know what would happen if I knew what was going to happen tomorrow, or what would happen today? I would suffer all the things for tomorrow, from today! So our ignorance is a blessing. Blessed ignorance. We will rejoice in our ignorance. But, I know someone who holds the future. He knows everything that I don’t know. He’s my friend. He’s on my side. Therefore, I don’t want to know. I am not worried. Praise God.

John 5:6, Wilt thou be made whole? After I have described to you our wretched condition, blind, dumb, deaf and crippled and I ask you the question, “Wilt thou be made whole?” You would say, “Yes! I want to rise up with the Sons of God. Amen! I want to be in that situation where I am no longer blind, where I can walk in the Spirit, I can walk in the fullness of God. Yes, God. I want Your fullness, God!” Hallelujah.

Wilt thou be made whole? The impotent man answered him, Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me. Amen. He was crippled. He couldn’t help himself. Hallelujah. Jesus didn’t ask him any more questions. Jesus gave him a command, verse 8, Jesus saith unto him, Rise, take up thy bed, and walk. “You don’t need the pool anymore.” Do you know, we understand that from that day that pool never functioned again! It was there for a purpose. “Arise, take up thy bed and walk!” This is what God is saying to us. The proof of it is the next verse. Verse 9, And immediately the man was made whole, and took up his bed, and walked: and on the same day was the sabbath. Now, what is the fullness of the Sabbath? Seventh day, the natural Sabbath. The spiritual Sabbath, the rest, is the Holy Ghost coming in to us. And the fullness of the Sabbath is the seventh millennium. What millennium are we in now? The seventh millennium. God is promising that within this millennium… Now, can you imagine my promising you something for a thousand years? But, you know what? The part that is good about that promise is that He said, “…and they shall live and reign with Him for a thousand years” (Revelation 20:4). So, although we have bitten into the thousand years already, He is promising you that you are going to reign with Him on earth here for a thousand years. So you have nothing to lose. God is finishing the work now so you know that the work is going to be finished in the morning time. You’re not going to have to wait for three hundred years or something for it to be done. It’s going to be done in the morning! From what we see, we can see God moving that this man represents the Body of Christ. We are impotent, we are weak, we are blind. As much as we can see, we are blind. We are just not able to rise up and walk. I mean, we want to walk in holiness and perfection, and we stumble. Can you imagine, by the time he is to get there [the impotent man to the pool], somebody else jumps in! It shows that he could amble around, but he was not walking straight, and God said, “You, get up and walk!” And it was the Sabbath day. In the seventh millennium, in the time in which we are, God is doing a work. God is bringing forth a people. You will look at yourselves and say, “I couldn’t be part of that. I’m no good.” Amen. I say the same. “I’m no good. I have no confidence in me, but I know that God is good and He is within me, and I have confidence in Him.”

He’s going to do the work. Not just going to, but He IS doing the work. I can feel within my being that God is doing the work. Amen. Every one of you here must look inside and see what your intentions are today, and what they were yesterday, and you know that there is a work being done. Amen. The receiving of the fullness of Christ begins with the giving up of that which is not the fullness, of that which is against God. I don’t know if you understand what I’m saying? Whenever you find in your soul that you wouldn’t care anymore if God took everything that you had, if you lost everything in this world, you are getting closer to God. “When the things of earth,” the little song says, “grow strangely dim,” then it means that Jesus is coming closer and you are getting closer to Jesus. Praise be to God.

Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it (Hebrews 4:1). It is not hard to serve God. Somebody says it is hard. It’s not hard to serve God. All you have to do is just make up your mind to die. Yes. It’s not hard to serve God when you come to the point that you just give up life, this natural life, all you want is Jesus, according to some of the songs that we sing, praise be to God. We need to pray that things that we cannot do for ourselves, that God will do it for us. I know some of us pray and we are hoping God won’t do it. Amen. But, let us pray that the things we want, we know it needs to be done to us, that God will do it to us. Amen.

I was saying the other day… You know, Brother Bruce Buckmaster is not a person who talks very much. Of the talking people in our midst, he must be about the least talking person that I know. He just says a few words. But the message that his sickness has preached, his falling off that roof, the message that it has preached to his family and to the church is something that he couldn’t have done had he been preaching for a hundred years. Amen. Because I see his family on their knees, I see them closer to God than they ever were. I see us crying to God, every one of us. We could have fallen off roofs ourselves. I mean, some of us have even tried it, eh Peter? Yes! Some of us tried it, but we didn’t succeed in damaging ourselves. In other words, God prevented it, God had mercy. But God allowed this thing to happen. Whatever the consequences are, he is suffering, but it is bringing people closer to God, bringing people to consciousness. Amen. A lamb for a house. Hallelujah.

I pray that we will awake! I pray that we will begin to understand a little bit more about God. Put yourself in the place of God. If you had a people like we are, what would you do with them? You ever thought of that? You know, my sister used to say a phrase, “You give God a hard time!” She always said, “You people give God a hard time!” I mean, we are forcing God to do certain things to bring us into the place that we must come. You pray hard enough and tell God hard enough what you want to be, tell God hard enough what you desire, tell God you want to be part of the first fruits company, tell God you want… …you keep on doing that, amen? And if I have to come to the hospital to visit you, I will remind you of your prayers. For God is going to do what He has to do when He has to do it! Let us turn. You know this little song that says, “Let us search and try our ways and turn again to the Lord.” Oh, God help us!

May God bless you this morning. I think you have not heard me preach so shortly before, but it is good. Let us take this and let us think about it, and let us pray about it. The time, the season of the moving of the waters is at hand, and God is going to have to do something! And there is only one way that we are going to make it! If God really put us in the grinder, some of us… I say, “Lord, deliver me from the grinder.” I don’t want to be put in the grinder, so therefore, “Lord, I will obey You. I will walk in Your precepts. I will do all that You want me to do. But, please God, don’t put me in the grinder.” And like Job, some of us will say, “That which I fear most has come upon me.”

God bless you, brethren. Amen. Thank you. It’s not that I cut the message short. It’s just that it’s finished. God bless you.