The Courage To Do It

Part 3:

Bishop Joseph W. Walker, III

Mt. Zion Baptist Church, Nashville  |  Weekend Series  |  September 2026 Sermon Series

Watch the full Sunday service: https://www.youtube.com/@mtzionnashville/streams

September 20th, 2026

Scripture: John 5:1-9 (NKJV)

1 After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

2 Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, which is called in Hebrew, Bethesda, having five porches.

3 In these lay a great multitude of sick people, blind, lame, paralyzed, waiting for the moving of the water.

4 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 of whatever disease he had.

5 Now a certain man was there who had an infirmity thirty-eight years.

6 When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he already had been in that condition a long time, He said to him, “Do you want to be made well?”

7 The sick man answered Him, “Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; but while I am coming, another steps down before me.”

8 Jesus said to him, “Rise, take up your bed and walk.”

9 And immediately the man was made well, took up his bed, and walked.

 And that day was the Sabbath.

Prayer

Father, we thank You for what You have for our lives today. We pray, God, that our hearts will be open, that our spirits will be open to receive the revelation that is about to go forth today. We need to hear from You. So, God, in Your Word today, we ask that we be made better because of what we are about to receive. We thank You for being a God who speaks to us right where we are, and we believe that we are going to be changed because of what we are about to receive. We give You glory. We give You praise, because we believe somebody’s life is about to be changed forever. In the name of Jesus we pray, let every heart say amen.

I. INTRODUCTION

There are moments in all of our lives when life knocks us down. If we could pass this microphone around, people would testify, “You know what? I know what it feels like to be knocked down.” Knocked down financially, knocked down emotionally, knocked down spiritually, knocked down physically. Being knocked down is one thing, but how you respond to it is another. It is incredibly important to understand that whenever you have been knocked down, the enemy’s intent is for you to stay down, to create a sense of hesitancy about any possibility of ever coming back to the place God would have you to be. Sometimes you try, and you try, and you keep getting disappointment after disappointment. It can be demoralizing, frustrating, irritating. Somebody here today, you have tried, and you put everything in motion to do what you thought you needed to do, and yet you experienced that gut punch, and you are right back at square one. This is what happens to people of God. This is what opens up a whole new understanding of resilience.

This is what is important for us all to understand in this season. It is not so much about being knocked down. It is about understanding that God is a God who wants to help you get up. God is doing His work today, because I need you to understand that regardless of whatever circumstances knocked you down, being knocked down, staying down, is not your destiny. Your destiny has everything to do with where God is about to take you. So it is important to get this Word today, because we are introduced to a man in John chapter 5 who finds himself down. The Bible declares that we meet him in Jerusalem, by the sheep market, at a place called the pool of Bethesda. It has five porches, and five is not by accident, because the number five represents mercy, it represents grace. Put a pin there.

And while he is there, he is not alone, because it is a holiday. It is a gathering of people who have various maladies. Everyone who shows up at the pool has something wrong with them. Some are blind, some have leprosy, a variety of different ailments. Something is wrong with everybody who shows up at that pool. Something is wrong with everybody who shows up at 7594 Old Hickory Boulevard, Whites Creek, Tennessee. Something is wrong with somebody who is sitting in your row today. I don’t need you to feel any kind of way that something is wrong with you, because I need you to look at your row and say, “Something is wrong with all of us.” All of us have a condition. All of us have something we need to deal with today.

We are going to find out that God not only is aware of your situation, but that God has the power to turn your situation around. Here at this pool there is one man, and the Bible says that he has been there, watch this, for 38 years. Can you imagine? Thirty-eight years, going at a certain season to this place. People take him there. What is interesting is that he goes there because at a certain season a certain angel comes down and troubles the water, and whoever gets into the pool first is healed of whatever malady they have. It was a mad fight down there. There was no hospitality. There was no chivalry. It was every man for himself. Some days he would go and think, “This will be my year,” and then somebody would jump ahead of him. Other days he thought he had the right position. He thought, “This is going to be it. I did everything. I planned it out. I had a master plan laid out. Now it’s my time.” And as soon as he thought it was going to be his time, somebody else jumped in ahead of him. Thirty-eight years of going back and forth, back and forth, experiencing the same result. Frustrated, irritated. And now the Bible says that Jesus comes by.

The Bible says that He knew how long he had been in that situation. I want you to understand something, people of God: Jesus knows how long you have been dealing with what you have been dealing with, even if the people around you have no idea. He knows how long you have been crying. He knows how long you have been on your face believing Him for a miracle. But guess what? He not only knows about it, He is about to do something about it. Because the Bible says that Jesus walks up and has a conversation with that man. Don’t miss your shout right here. There are a lot of people at the pool, a lot of people with various maladies, but guess who is there? It is that man’s day. Because when it is your time, no devil in hell can stop it. When it is your time, the Lord will skip over all the people just to get to you. And somebody who is watching me right now, God says it is your time. I am speaking to you. Don’t let the crowd confuse you. You are here for a reason, because God wants you to know that He knows exactly how long you have been there.

6 When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he already had been in that condition a long time, He said to him, “Do you want to be made well?”

And Jesus comes with a question: “Do you want to be made whole?” What kind of question is that to ask somebody who has been down like that for 38 years? “Do you want to be made whole?” It seems comical to ask someone that. But Jesus is not asking this question because He is seeking information. He is asking this question because He is trying to measure the man’s expectation. Can you see your situation beyond where you are right now? Can you see your life beyond the pain you are experiencing right now? There is something greater on the other side. I just want to know: are you expecting it to happen? And I believe this house is full of people who have expectation. Do you wonder why the atmosphere was off the chain today? It is because people came in today not for business as usual. We have somebody here who is expecting God to do something. I am believing that before I leave out of here, something is about to happen in my life. God is about to turn my situation around. I believe in this crowd that you won’t leave here the same way you came. Who am I talking to? I am just looking for the section that is expecting something. I am looking for the people who are not saying the same old thing. I am expecting a miracle. I see the invisible. I feel the intangible.

7 The sick man answered Him, “Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; but while I am coming, another steps down before me.”

Now look at the man’s response to Jesus: “Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to help me.” I don’t have nobody to help me. Jesus is giving him a declaration and he is giving Jesus his dilemma. It is a paradoxical situation, because on the one hand he is in a place of mercy, but he is living in misery. What does it mean to be in a place of mercy and expectation but privately carry a place of misery? Today I want to have a real conversation with you, because how Jesus brings this miracle to pass is, I believe, going to be so impactful to many of us. And it begins with recognizing what knocked you down.

II. RECOGNIZE WHAT KNOCKED YOU DOWN

You are not there because of nothing. Something happened in your life, and you have got to be honest about it. What was it that allowed this man to be in this particular condition? What knocked him down? What caused him to be on his back that many years? Sometimes when you are really sensitive to this, you have a level of empathy, and you do not walk into people’s lives, look at their situation, and make judgment calls. You don’t walk by the pool of Bethesda and say, “What’s wrong with all those people?” The question is not what is wrong with you. In the words of Dr. Bruce Perry and Oprah Winfrey in that great book, the real question is, “What happened to you?” Because what happened to you is a story that a lot of people don’t want to sit down and learn about. People just classify you and make judgment calls about you without knowing that you inherited some stuff you never intended to inherit. You have been through some stuff that people don’t understand. If they understood what you are going through, they would understand how you ended up in the place where you are today. You are sitting next to a story. You are a story. And guess what? God can handle your story. God can handle your scars. Even when people can’t handle it, God says, just be honest about what you are dealing with.

• Admit it
• Accept it
• Abandon it

How did you end up in this situation? It is OK to say, “God, this hurts.” I don’t have to over-spiritualize this. I don’t have to walk around like everything is fine all the time. Everything ain’t fine all the time. Some people just walk around, every time you ask how they are doing, “Hallelujah, praise the Lord.” Hey, I have some days like that. But some days it is not “hallelujah.” Some days it is, “I’m almost depressed. I’m bitter some days. I don’t feel like being bothered by life. I’m trying to figure this stuff out.” Who am I talking to? Whatever it is, God can handle it. You have to recognize what made you fall. You have to admit it. I have got to be honest about what happened. I cannot heal from what I am hiding. I admit it, but I don’t accept it as my permanent reality. I accept the fact that something happened to me, and I recognize that it hurt. I am not in denial about what hurt me, but I will not stay here. I may be right here now, but the next time you see me, I won’t be where I am right now. I wish I had somebody who could see what you’ve got to do. You have got to learn to face what happened without allowing it to define you.

A. You have to face what happened without allowing it to define you.

Notice something about him that is quite intriguing. The Bible says there was a man by the pool of Bethesda, but the Bible never gives him a name. It is interesting, because he is defined by his condition. So many people allow themselves to be defined by their condition. You are not what happened to you. You are who God created you to be. But if you allow yourself to be confined by your condition, the woman with the issue of blood, the man by the pool of Bethesda, the blind man unclear: “a mess”, you will hear, “Why can’t you call me by my name? Why do you have to call me blind?” Because people always want to associate you with your condition. But when you understand who God called you to be, you don’t respond to people who like to label you based on your condition. You are not who they say you are. You are who God says you are. You are fearfully and wonderfully made. You are a royal priesthood. You are a chosen generation. You know who you are. You do not allow yourself to be incarcerated by people’s understanding of who you are, tied to your condition.

B. You can get so used to being down that down becomes normal.

Watch this. There comes a time in your life when you have got to declare over your life that you are not going to normalize this. Because you can get so used to being down that down becomes normal. Thirty-eight years in the same situation, and if you are not careful, watch this, the danger of being down so long is that you can actually forget what it feels like to be up. Sometimes the greatest enemy is not the thing that knocked you down. Sometimes the greatest enemy is becoming comfortable on the floor. Because if you have been down long enough, you will start decorating the floor. You start organizing your life around the floor. You become a private hater of anything better that is not on the floor. People on the floor start looking at you like, “Why aren’t you on the floor?” I am not on the floor because that is not my destiny. Because what happens is you have normalized the floor, so what are you trying to do? You are trying to bring people who are up in the tree down to the floor. People up in the tree ain’t coming down to the floor. They are trying to get you to come up to the tree.

It is called normalization, psychologically and sociologically. Normalization is what happens when repeated exposure to something causes you to adjust to it. Even something that was once painful, unusual, and unacceptable now becomes ordinary. In other words, you can live with something so long that you stop recognizing that you are living beneath what God intended for you. And I want you to understand that normalization moves you into the space of adaptation, because adaptation is how you learn to function in environments that are not healthy. You learn how to survive things that were never supposed to be permanent. Just because you have learned how to adapt to something or survive it doesn’t mean that is the thing God has for your life. You can adapt to the moment. You can adapt to the dysfunction. You can adapt to the disappointment. You can adapt to rejection. You can adapt to living paycheck to paycheck, but that ain’t God’s plan for your life. I am not going to sit back and say, “This is just how I am.” The devil is a liar. This is what happens to some of you: “This is just how I am.” That is not how you are. That is not who God wants you to be.

• You experience it
• You endure it
• You accommodate it
• You normalize it
• You defend it

Let me show you how this works. First, you experience it. Something happens, something knocks you down. Then you endure it. You learn how to live with it. Then you accommodate it. You start changing your behavior because of it. Then you normalize it. You stop seeing that there is something that needs to change. Then you defend it. You begin explaining why you have got to stay the way you are. That sounds like the conversation you had with your cousin. You are defending dysfunction. Are you defending dysfunction because you have normalized something? You have adapted to it. Being down is all you know, and in a new environment where everybody is down, you wake up and everybody is down, and everyone you hear is talking down. Everybody is living down. Everybody is loving down. Guess what, all you’re going to do is go down. I just talked to somebody about this the other day. Declare over your life that this is the last day you’ll see me this low. Look at somebody and tell them, “This is the last day you’re going to see me this low. Am I talking to anybody here? I am on my way.

This normalization, this institutionalization, is so tricky. You have got to be careful. Why do you keep going back? Why do you keep calling that number that should have been deleted? Israel knew Egypt was bad. God delivered them from Egyptian bondage, from the taskmaster Pharaoh, and when they got out of Egypt, they could not let go of the concept of romanticizing it. Each of us does that, because they remembered the food in Egypt. “At least we ate in Egypt.” But you forgot how much the food cost in Egypt. And some of you romanticize seasons and forget how much they cost you in your life. You forget how many years it took off of your life. I am not talking to anybody here today. That is why I just have to tell somebody, you ain’t going back to Egypt. Don’t go back. Don’t go back. Don’t go back. I don’t care what it looks like. Don’t you go back. God has something greater in store for your life.

And people of God, hear me. Sometimes God has to interrupt your routine to let you know that you have been in this place long enough. God has interrupted. I know it is uncomfortable for you, and sometimes you feel like you are under attack, but God is just disrupting your routine. You have been there long enough. You have cried long enough. You have been hurt long enough. You have been in this situation long enough. You have been down long enough. Now it is time for you to get up. Pick up your bed. It is time for you to go forward and walk. And watch this. It is time for you to get up. Your get-up season begins right now.

III. RELEASE WHAT HAS KEPT YOU DOWN

And watch this. Jesus shows up. I want you to pay attention to this. Jesus says, “Rise, take up your bed, and walk.” You must follow the progression of the text. The text says that Jesus knew how long he had been in that situation. He knew what case he was in, meaning that He understood his case, as a clinical term. You have a file. I know what is in your file. I know what you are spiritually, emotionally, physically. I know exactly where you are. And watch what happens. This is so important. The man could only default to this: “Sir, I don’t have anybody, when the water is troubled, to help me get in. I’m all by myself down here. Nobody down here will help me.” There comes a moment when you have got to ignore, watch this, foolishness and walk in faith. You have got to ignore what you see and walk in what you know. If you notice, Jesus says, “Do you want to be made whole?” The man says, “Sir, I have no one to help me,” and Jesus immediately says, “Take up your bed. Get up and walk.” What is Jesus trying to show you? He is trying to help you understand that, if you pay attention, this miracle is not going to happen by your system. It is going to happen by the Savior. You missed this. You are so codependent upon what you thought was going to happen. You thought the pool was going to bless you. I am not here to help you get positioned by the pool. I am here to tell you I created the water in the pool, so I am getting rid of the pool. The pool could never bless you.

A. Stop carrying what God is trying to change.

8 Jesus said to him, “Rise, take up your bed and walk.”

God told me to tell somebody, your miracle is about to come in an unorthodox way. It will not come the way you thought. You say, “I ain’t got nobody to help me. I ain’t got nobody to help me. I ain’t got nobody to help me.” And you are talking to the answer. You missed that. You sound like Mary and Martha when Jesus showed up at Lazarus’s tomb and they said, “If You had been here.” “I am the resurrection.” The One you need is standing in front of you. If you knew the man like you knew the man, you would be giving God glory. Because God will show up, but the system can’t do it. When the system doesn’t have the money, God will get you the money for the system. When the system doesn’t have a spot for you in the program, God will get you a spot in the program. With the systems that you don’t qualify for to get the house, God will fix it so they lower the price and make you qualify.

But you have to understand something. The man’s bed is krabattos, the Greek word for a bed. He is not on a Posturepedic. He is not on a king-size or queen-size bed. He is on a small mat, a thin, uncomfortable mat. He has normalized making something comfortable that wasn’t intended for comfort. The mat was for an overnight stay, not for the long haul. Some of you were giving tenure to stuff God intended to be temporary. Jesus says he is blind, because he is so into the matt. I am going to change your association with the thing that has been carrying you. I am going to show you what this looks like. For 38 years this bed has been carrying you, but now I am going to swap it. What has been carrying you? I need you to carry it. Can I talk to somebody right now? The very thing that has been carrying you, God is about to flip that fate, and now you are about to carry it. Who am I talking to? The thing you have been depending on is going to have to depend upon you. You have no idea what your future looks like. Touch your neighbor and say, “My future looks bright.” You have got to start carrying stuff you never even imagined. Somebody give God glory. What used to carry you, now you are carrying. Now you have authority over it. I want you to hear this. He is carrying it up. “Rise, take up your bed.”

When the Lord shows up, you ain’t got no choice but to look up. Sometimes you can be so low you ain’t got no choice but to look up. But you have got to pay attention to the progression., because Jesus tells him, wait, “Rise up.” You have got to pay attention, because if you study it, “rise up” is one part of the verse and “walk” is another. Are you seeing the text now? So “rise up” means get up, it means change your posture. Look like you may be in it, but I feel something happening. Who am I talking to? I may be at the same address, but I feel something happening. I may be in the same situation, but I feel something moving in my life. And wait a minute, wait a minute. “Take up your bed.” Take this thing here. I need you to start rolling it up. Put it on your arms.

B. Forgiveness is part of getting free.

Watch this now, before we leave. There was a place by the sheep market with five porches, mercy. It is a colony of hurting humanity, and if you know anything about hurt, hurt people hurt people. Jesus was aware of his case. He was aware of what he was physically, psychologically, relationally. Are y’all getting this? So now we have got to get to the place where forgiveness happens, because forgiveness is a part of getting free. I can’t let you leave Bethesda with bitterness in your heart, because according to your case, you are holding on to what the people did to you. They stepped over you. They walked over you. Somebody manipulated a relationship with you. Some got close to you to get what they wanted, and when they got what they wanted, they left you. Some people disrespected you. You have been down here 38 years, you are an OG, and they still walk over you, step over you, like you don’t even exist. What does that do to a person? How does that deal with a person’s heart? You become jaded and bitter, and you have a different posture about people. Jesus says, no, no, no, no, I am not letting you leave here with that in your heart. I am not going to let you leave here until you learn how to leave the residue behind. I am going to let you leave the pain behind, because that ain’t real deliverance if you leave here but you are still carrying what people did to you in your heart. Touch your neighbor and say, “God is about to teach me forgiveness.”

Listen, and forgiveness is not waiting on the people in Bethesda to tell you they are sorry, because if you are living waiting on an apology, you are going to be down there another 38 years. Forgiveness is not about waiting on an apology. Forgiveness is about you releasing them from the obligation so you can get that out of your heart and turn that thing over to God. I can still forgive you, but I can also limit access to you. I can forgive you, but I ain’t inviting you to the picnic, because once you burn me, that is all I need. Am I talking to anybody here today? I came to tell somebody, before you walk out of this place, you have got to let it go. Tell somebody, let it go. Let it go. You have got to stop letting people live free in your mind. Let it go. You have got to stop walking around still harboring what happened to you. You have got to let it go.

Listen. There is a lady who went through a divorce, and she is so bitter about what happened in the divorce and what happened in the marriage. Someone asked later how she was doing, and she kept talking about how painful the divorce was and what the person did to her, and the person stopped her and said, “When did he stop hurting you?” She kept on talking, and then it hit her: “When did he stop hurting you?” It resonated with her. The question was really causing her to reflect, because the papers were all signed, the property was already divided. He had moved on with his life, and she is still talking about what happened. She can’t move on with her life, because she is so immersed in the toxicity and pain of what somebody did to her. God is about to take that stuff out of your heart. What God is about to take you to, He is about to purify your heart. It is time to let it go. Whatever people did to you in Bethesda, you have got to turn that thing over to God and recognize, “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,” and He is the Lord that pays. Some people forgot what they did. They are living their best life, and you are still hung up on what happened to you. There comes the moment when you have got to let that stuff go. Paul put it this way:

Philippians 3:13-14 Forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

Somebody shout, “Let it go!”

IV. RISK THE COURAGE TO GET UP

A. You have to move before you feel ready.

So here he is. He is on his way out. But I am going to tell you, the Bible teaches us the final thing that you have to have: the courage to get up. Getting up is risky. It is risky because he has spent 38 years on his back, and now he has to be on his feet. But you have got to move before you feel ready. When the Lord says get up and go, sometimes you have got to move before you even think you are ready to go. You don’t think you are ready to go back to school, but go in anyway. You don’t think you are even ready to apply for that job, apply anyway, because somebody knows all you need is one word from God. I can tell you something: the miracle is in your movement. The miracle is in your movement, because when he got up, the Bible says “immediately.” Can I tell somebody, God is about to do something in your life immediately. The moment you start making a move in the right direction, the moment you start doing what God tells you to do.

9 And immediately the man was made well, took up his bed, and walked.

B. When you get up, don’t go back to where you fell.

I want you to see the man now. The thing that was holding him, now he is holding it, and now look at where he is going. He is leaving this place of pain. And guess what? When you get up, don’t go back to where you fell. I came to tell somebody, in this season you have got to declare, “I am not going back to the madness that I fell into.”

Can I help you understand what the real shout is? Don’t miss this. Look at him walking out of this place, the five porches, watch this, five porches around one pool, everybody depending upon the system, but he is now on his way out, walking. But please understand this, he ain’t just walking. He has walked through a system that everybody else is depending on. Let me see if I can make it make sense. For 38 years, other people decided where he was going to be. For 38 years, somebody said, “I’m going to put you on porch number one.” Somebody said, “I’ll put you on porch number four. We’ll just figure this out.” For 38 years he had no say in where people put him. But now, guess what, he is walking out on his own accord. He is walking wherever he wants to go, because this time he is going to go as God leads him to go, not as people dictate to him. In this season, when God gives you a miracle, God is going to give you a miracle in a way that is going to blow people’s minds.

Because there were two people who got a miracle that day. Here it is: one person got a miracle because they waited for the troubling of the water, and the system gave them a miracle, and we celebrate that. Congratulations. But there was another person who got a miracle, and they can’t tell you how they got the miracle, except this way: they didn’t go by the system. They got the miracle because the Savior touched their life. And when the person who got touched by the Savior has to see the person who went by the system, the person who went by the system is scratching their head, trying to figure out, “How are you in the same program? How are you in the same neighborhood? How are you making the same money?” “I’m making it because I didn’t go by the system. I went by the Savior.” And somebody here, God is about to blow your mind. Am I talking to anybody here? Look at your neighbor and tell them, “I don’t go to the pool. I’m not depending on the system, baby. Everything I have is because of God.”

So I came to tell you, you get up! Get out of that place. First, it is time to walk it out this time. Don’t just walk into your destiny. It is time to walk into your peace. It is time to walk. And come home. It is time. Home is not a building. Home is an alignment. Home is a place where joy is, in peace. Home is a place where everything begins to feel like I am exactly what God wants me to be. Home is a place where God got me off my back, and God put me on my feet, and God made me walk by systems that I didn’t have to depend on no more, because my blessings do not come from a system. My blessing comes from the Savior.

CLOSING INVITATION

Today, the Lord knew how long you have been in this situation. He brought you to this place today because He wants to talk to you. Can you rise up and walk and come home? I need a relationship with Jesus Christ. Rise up. Come home. He can handle it. Did you hear today, and you say, “Pastor, I heard this Word, I need to recommit my life. You were talking to me, that was me. I’ve got to let go of some stuff”? Come on and give your life to Christ.

Have a blessed new week with the Lord! ❤️