Jesus Heals The Whole Person

Our text for this morning is a really nice story about Jesus, a story that shows a number of things. It shows some beautiful things about his character. It starts to explain to us why such an amazing man was persecuted and even put to death. It shows some deep insight into us human beings. I invite you to turn to it in your pew Bible. It’s Luke 5: 17-22 and it can be found on page 62 of the New Testament section. And then please stand for the reading of God’s word.

17 One day, while he was teaching, Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting near by (they had come from every village of Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem); and the power of the Lord was with him to heal. 18 Just then some men came, carrying a paralyzed man on a bed. They were trying to bring him in and lay him before Jesus; 19 but finding no way to bring him in because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and let him down with his bed through the tiles into the middle of the crowd in front of Jesus. 20 When he saw their faith, he said, "Friend, your sins are forgiven you." 21 Then the scribes and the Pharisees began to question, "Who is this who is speaking blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God alone?" 22 When Jesus perceived their questionings, he answered them, "Why do you raise such questions in your hearts? 23 Which is easier, to say, 'Your sins are forgiven you,' or to say, 'Stand up and walk'? 24 But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins"-- he said to the one who was paralyzed-- "I say to you, stand up and take your bed and go to your home." 25 Immediately he stood up before them, took what he had been lying on, and went to his home, glorifying God. 26 Amazement seized all of them, and they glorified God and were filled with awe, saying, "We have seen strange things today."

So, look at verse 17 and somebody tell me what Jesus was doing when this episode started. He was teaching. This is like the wallpaper of the Gospels. Jesus is always teaching. And he was always teaching because he always wanted people to understand. People’s faith grew as they began to understand. As their faith grew he could do more and more things for them. So he was teaching all the time and great things were happening.

And I know that our culture would rather skip the work of thinking and be content with feeling and doing. People who follow their feelings without thinking quickly go astray. People who just want to work for God without thinking about what they should do or why can end up working very hard without getting much in return. Hear this morning that again and again, Jesus devoted his days to teaching. And it wasn’t just Sunday mornings, but every day of the week. God wants his people to understand what they believe and why. Disciples of Jesus Christ are learners above all else.

Luke doesn’t tell us where this happened, but Mark says it’s back in Capernaum, his home base for much of his ministry.

Today we find something new about the crowd that has gathered around Jesus. There’s a new group out there. Who is it? That’s in verse 17, also. Today there were Pharisees and teachers of the law. They had come from all over the place to see Jesus. And it sounds like there were a lot of them there that day.

So who are these people? Every village needed to have a teacher of the law. He would be the school teacher, leading classes for the children in what we call the Old Testament. He would also be something like our lawyers, showing people how to get things done and stay within the law, and something like our notaries public, making documents official. People trusted them. Some Bible translations call them scribes.

And the Pharisees were the most religious people of the time. They out religioned everybody. They had rules for everything and they kept them all and they looked down their noses at anyone who didn’t keep their rules.

The word “Pharisee” means those who separated themselves. They were better than everybody else. And you can see it in our text. They weren’t sitting right at Jesus’ feet. They were ‘near by,’ off a little bit. And our text says that Jesus had been healing people. That should have told them that God was at work here, but it didn’t help. Even when God was healing people that day, they still kept their distance.