Four Men Who Made A Difference #3 Series

Great Lessons from the Life of Christ #3

Four Men Who Made a Difference

(Mark 2:1-12)

Parallel Passages: Matthew 9:1-8; Luke 5:17-26; 5:8-9

Recently heard a preacher talk about his experience in another country where both physical and spiritual needs were overwhelming.

• A country of 8 million people where the name of Jesus is practically unknown. He estimated that there were less than 1,000 believers in the entire country.

• 1/2 of the children die before their eighth birthday.

• He told of a mom who had lost 12 of her 14 children before the age of 14.

• Poverty - beyond belief, as families rummaged through garbage piles in search of food, and drank from contaminated water sources.

• An country where sex trafficking results in 1,000s of young girls being taken out of their homes each year and shipped around the world to be used and abused.

• His list went on and on and on, and his question was: How do we as Christians respond to this collision of both physical and spiritual needs that exists in our world?

We show up at church, we sit in meetings and discuss the problems and needs we are aware of - but the question is: What are we doing about it, and our text today is one that speaks to both of those.

You just heard the story: Jesus is speaking to a full house and four men show up with their sick friend. I imagine as they struggle around the outskirts of the crowd, most people are doing their best to ignore them.

They see the crowd and they have a conversation. One says, "Let's climb up on the roof." To which another replies, "Brilliant idea dude, Jesus is inside." Another says, "Let's take the roof off." "Right" another responds. "Listen guys, we don't have many options here" and they do wind up on the roof and begin to dig through. If you are below, can you imagine hearing the noise and then dirt beginning to fall. This isn't a baby crying in service. The text literally says, "they unroofed the roof." They tear out a hole so big they let this man down and there he lays in front of Jesus. Can you imagine the looks of folk's faces?

What Jesus sees is an act of faith. He sees four men who believes He can do something about their friend. And He can.

His words - "Your sins are forgiven” seem rather odd since he did not ask for forgiveness, but in that day, disease was associated with sin, and Jesus is stating, "I have the power to forgive sin.”

And in the minds of the religious leaders, He has blasphemed God, because in their eyes no one can forgive sin but God.

Jesus heals the man. He walks away. The crowd rejoices and the religious leaders do what they always do – try to find a different approach to oppose Jesus There is so much in this story –

Number One:

The first thing obvious in this text is the preaching and power of Jesus. I won't spend any time here because we will see each of these over and over as we walk through the gospel of Mark. But the point is - everywhere Jesus went people showed up and when people showed up, Jesus did two things: Jesus proved who He was by the power He possessed and as verse two states – “He preached the word to them.” He had a message, and He never missed an opportunity to share it.

Truth is not learned by osmosis – people then and now have to be taught. Jesus did it then. His followers do it now.

Number Two

The second thing we see in this text are two very urgent needs.

• The physical need is obvious as there is this man confined to a mat. We are not told exactly what he has, but he has to be carried.

• While that physical need was obvious, his spiritual need was ultimate/paramount. More than this man needs physical healing, he needs personal holiness. His ultimate need/our ultimate need is not to be rid of our physical maladies - his and our ultimate need is to be reconciled with his Maker.

• When I listen to us pray, I'm not sure we accept that. We do a lot more praying for healing than we do for holiness. We spend a lot more time talking to God about our physical condition than we do our spiritual condition.

Just listen to our prayers. They are filled with requests for God’s blessings on the sick, more so than for God to change our spirits.

I want to be clear – there is nothing wrong with praying for physical healing, but more important than our physical healing is what we became in the process. That is much more important.