In our Gospel Lesson this morning, we meet up with Jesus just after he returns “home.” We don’t always think of Jesus having a home, but this was not his own anyway. In this case, home seems to mean Peter’s home in Capernaum. Shortly before our Gospel, both Matthew and Mark share a similar record of events.
1 - Jesus travels to stay at Peter’s home in Capernaum, and heals Peter’s Mother in Law. Jesus then begins preaching in town.
2 - Everyone hears about the miracle, and brings everyone, and I mean everyone, who had diseases or were possessed, and Jesus healed all day and into the night.
3 – Jesus leaves town early the next morning to pray. Why?
This seems to happen all the time through Jesus’ ministry, and is a reflection on the shortsightedness of people, and the patient goodness of God. Jesus’ mission is to bring us the Good News of God’s love and redemption to the world. But the people get sidetracked. The message isn’t miracles to live a few more years a little happier and a little less pain. It is to spend eternity with God, cleansed from our sins, and made not just in Adam’s image, but in Christ’s image, which is even better.
And here is the problem again and again. The miracles which testify that Jesus is God, and has the authority to forgive sins, are more popular than the Gospel. People are more excited and focused the things that our Creator provides, than the Creator who provides them. Key
The people of Capernaum are excited to greet Jesus the miracle worker, but aren’t that interested in Jesus the Savior, Jesus the preacher of Good News. So, he leaves to pray and travel around.
While traveling, in nearby Gadara, He sends a legion of demons into a herd of pigs after exorcising them from a man. The people are terrified and demand he leave town, which is an interesting reaction. You expect oohs and aahs, not terror in the face of miracles. It really shows you the truth of the record of scripture, the true reactions. When faced with God, some people repent and fall on their face, and some want to continue and push God away. These Jewish Pig farmers push God away.
So Jesus returns “home”… Peter’s house, and the people hear he is back and mob him again like before. The focus is on the paralyzed man carried on a stretcher by his friends to Jesus. Mark tells us the crowd was so great that the man’s friends had to lower him through Peter’s roof.
The man is brought to Jesus for physical healing, but he has a greater need that Jesus meets first. Jesus tells the man, “Be of good cheer; your sins are forgiven you.” I want to focus on this, because this phrase seems to be the least exciting thing in the lesson for most who came, even though it is the most important thing that could possibly be said.
No one records what this man or his friends thought of Jesus’ absolution, which is a shame, but I am sure it was met with puzzled looks. Aren’t you going to heal him??? We see the scribes/pharisees instantly recoil at the thought of a man forgiving another man’s sins against God.
They would not have had a problem if Jesus had said something like, “May your sins be forgiven,” but He simply declares that the man’s debt to God is wiped out. Only God has that prerogative, and so the scribes charged Jesus with blasphemy for claiming to be able to forgive debts only God can forgive. They are right in one sense. Either Jesus is God, or he is blaspheming.
The Gospel passage is an excellent example for teaching children of the incredible claims of Jesus. With youth groups, I would try to find a brother and older sister, and then ask one, usually the older, “what would you think of me, if I saw your younger brother hit you, and then walked over and said, “I forgive you for hitting your sister”?”
The answer is usually a horrified face, and great indignation.
Her brother didn’t hit me, therefore, quite obviously, I can’t forgive him. And my claim to be able to forgive someone should only be made if they hurt me. But all sin is an offense against God. The Scribes realize here He was saying he was equal with God.
While the scribes were fuming about Jesus acting like He thinks He’s God, He proves it by reading their minds! And since forgiving sins isn’t accompanied by an outward sign, there’s no way to argue with Him except by charging blasphemy. “How can this man prove He has power to forgive sins?”
Jesus says to them: “Which is easier…to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ …or to say, ‘Arise and walk’?
But that you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins,” he said to the paralytic, “Arise, take up your bed, and go to your house.”
And the man promptly did just that. It’s easy to say “your sins are forgiven,” and it’s difficult to say “arise and walk,” because the effect of the saying arise and walk is readily seen, whereas the first can only be understood by faith.
Think, for instance, about the man who walks into a nursing home or hospital, and finds bedridden patients incapable of walking, and declares to them, “Arise and Walk!” If the no one does, …
If people start rising up …
Now, here is the interesting part, and what I want you to take home with you. When the paralyzed man was informed that his sins were forgiven, Jesus told him, “Be of good cheer.” Had Jesus only healed his body, he would not have needed to be told to rejoice, would he?
After all, he now can look forward to going home and walking in the front door, and display to his astonished family that he has been healed of his catastrophic illness. He is now able to earn a living. He can walk!
We need to be told to be of good cheer when nothing more dramatic happens “than our sins are forgiven,” when in fact this is the most dramatic thing that can happen in a human life.
I hope you understand that this is the clearest evidence of humanity having a huge spiritual problem.
Being in possession of the most precious thing a person can have, a redeemed soul, is no guarantee that we will behave accordingly and rejoice in its realization.
Had this man only had his sins forgiven that day, and not been healed, I don’t think we would read that, “The multitudes marveled and glorified God.” In fact, I think people would have been disappointed.
No one said, “Wow! He’s had his sins forgiven! Way to go, Jesus!” The forgiveness of sin is not as exciting a topic as quick fixes in this world, which is why so many people today are attracted to temporary promises rather than eternal ones, and promote social causes far above promoting the gospel.
The man that was healed was just like us beneath the surface. He needed to be told to rejoice that his sins were forgiven. He had faith to believe that Jesus could heal his body, but I wonder if he had gone home still on his bed if he would have rejoiced in the knowledge that his sins were wiped off God’s ledger.
We must wonder the same thing about ourselves. Our lesson this morning gives us the opportunity to ask what it is we value most.
If God is our focus in both the good times and the bad, if our constant practice is to judge ourselves by our redemption in Christ, and not by our place in the temporal pecking order of health, wealth, and security, we will have won a great victory in Christ.
Thank you to Pastor John Campbell for the original sermon (Be of Good Cheer) some 20+ years ago that this message is based on.
