The Greatest Of All Miracles Series

The Greatest of All Miracles

Matthew 9:1-8

In Matthew chapters 1-4 we see the PERSON of Jesus Christ. We are told of His virgin birth, childhood [Luke 2], baptism, and temptation. And it’s a blessing that Christ truly put on human flesh, becoming a real person, to do for all us other people what we could not do for ourselves.

Chapters 5-7 show us the PRINCIPLES of Jesus Christ. In His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus preached practical principles that are life changing, and He gave masterful illustrations that opened the eyes of our understanding, and helped to make it the world’s greatest sermon of all time.

Now in chapters 8 and 9 we are shown the POWER of Jesus Christ, and we see a series of 10 miracles He performed. We saw Him cleanse the leper, calm the storm, and cast out demons. He has power over the physical, power over the natural, and power over the spiritual!

At the end of this book He said,

Mt 28:18 And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.

The same Savior that created the universe, and spoke this world into existence, can not only heal the hurting, and still the storm, but He can save our souls!

Jesus had power over DEMONS, DISASTER, DISEASE, and even DEATH! (Matt. 9:18-25)

In our text Jesus has left the region of Gadara because they asked Him to. And there’s no record that He ever returned. It’s a very dangerous thing to reject Jesus, for you never know when your rejection will be accepted and become final…you never know when you’ve rejected Him for the last time. If He knocks on your heart’s door today, make sure and answer and let Him in!

Now Jesus is in Capernaum, His ministry headquarters.

There’s 3 things for us to see today:

1. The Pardon.

v. 1-2 Mark 2 gives more detail. The ‘they’ in Mt. 9:2 who bring in this crippled man, is actually 4 men. And the place where Jesus was preaching was so full that they had to lower this man in thru the roof. We don’t know these 4 men’s names, so I’d like to name them today.

I like to think the first guy was Frank Faith. He said, ‘guys, we gotta get this man to Jesus, for I believe He can heal him and give him what he needs.’ And we’ll never grow as a church until we firmly believe that Jesus can help them. We must be absolutely convinced that He is the only answer for a sin sick soul.

The second guy is named Larry Love. He said, ‘I love this man, and I cannot quit nor accept anything less than to bring him to Jesus.’ To grow as a church we must fall in love w/ the souls of mankind.

The third guy is named Dan Determination. He said, ‘let’s stop talking about it and start doing something…let’s get this show on the road and make it happen.’ And when they arrived and saw the entrance crowded with people he said something like, ‘oh no, we’ll find a way…we’ve come this far…hey, let’s lower him thru the roof!’ And I thank God for the people of GBC who see a task and do it, taking initiative. They have the attitude that if we’re gonna go anywhere as a church, then I need to take personal responsibility to see it through!

The fourth guy is Carl Cooperation. He said, ‘we’ll never succeed unless we team up and work together…everyone grab a limb!’ Many people in our lives will never COME to Jesus unless they are BROUGHT to Jesus!

The context indicates that this man was sick because of personal sin in his life. Here’s how we know: because usually Jesus deals with the physical need first before the spiritual. He would heal a person in their body before He dealt with their soul’s need. But in this case, He goes straight to the cause of the physical problem, which sometimes is spiritual in nature. Now, certainly most physical problems aren’t rooted in sin, but sometimes they are!

Jesus went straight to the heart of the matter. He went directly to the root of the problem. This man needed forgiveness of his sins and he knew it. He had faith just as the men who bore him did, and man’s faith leads to God’s grace!

You see, our problem is not our outward behavior…that’s just the symptoms. Our problem is an inward condition of sin. For this reason we do not need REFORMATION, but rather TRANSFORMATION!

We don’t need to ‘turn over a new leaf’…we need a whole new tree! And that’s only possible by the PARDON which Jesus offers to us.