Introduction: Alice in wonderland. Let me ask you a question, When you get where you’re going, where will you be? Or another way of asking the question is this. If you keep going where you are headed, do you really want to wind up there.

Set up the text: Jesus saw the man and approached him. He asked him a question, “Do you want to be healed?” It sounds a lot like when you get where you’re going where will you be? It is a question we all face from time to time. Do you really want to change? Do you really want things to be different?

I. The first thing that Jesus told him to do was to stand up. That was the very thing that he couldn’t do. He had a lot of excuses as to why he had been there so many years to never experience healing.

A. It was someone else’s fault

B. He gets overlooked

C. Jesus impressed upon him that it was up to the lame man to do something about it. He just needed to exercise his faith. Nothing changes unless something changes

II. The next step was to remove temptation to maintain the status quo. Jesus told him to pick up his bed.

Illustration: The story of the quaker and the cow. Sometimes the thing that we need to do in order for us to become what God as in store for us to be, is to step up and leave the past behind. Will there be things and people who draw us back to the way it used to be.

Illustration: One of the greatest illustration that we have of this in Scripture is in John 21 where the disciples we were frustrated and Peter said, “I’m Going Fishing.”

III. The next step was for him to put into practice the process of walking. He was not healed to stand still. He was not healed to spend every day down at the pool. He was healed so that he could walk the walk. By the nature of his walking he was a witness.