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.
• Never lose sight of the fact that spiritual healing is far more important than physical healing. In this story, there is a man that needs physical healing, but more importantly, he need spiritual healing.
And it may be that he knew that. I find it interesting that while his friends do everything they can to deal with his physical condition – there is no record of him asking to be healed. It is possible, he had a much better understanding of his needs than his friends did.
Number Three
The third thing I see in this text, are some obvious characteristics of Jesus. Three things stand out:
• Characteristic #1 - He knows our hearts. Just as He knew what the religious leaders were thinking...he knows every thought, motive, sinful desire of your heart. Hebrews 4:13 tells us that “all things are naked and open before the eyes of God.”
• Characteristic #2 - He can heal your disease. I never want to limit in my thinking what Jesus can do, but again I remind you that He is more concerned with your heart than He is your health...your character than your cancer...your disposition than your doctor's diagnosis. When I die, all that is going to matter is, what did I allow Him to make of me?”
• Characteristic #3 - He can forgive your sins. The greatest need we have is not physical, but spiritual. Again, more than one who can heal our sicknesses and diseases, we need one who can heal our sin. Mark 2 says that someone has come, and His name is Jesus.
The scribes were right - "Only God can forgive sin" and the good news of the Bible is that God has not left sinners alone in this world of sin and suffering. Rather, He came and lived among us, died on the cross and rose from the grave, that we might be reconciled to Him.
The gospel is not - If you believe in Jesus, you will be healed of all your diseases or God will make you rich. No, the gospel is much better news than that. The gospel is - If you give your life to Christ, He will forgive your every sin, and they will be forever gone.
Have you ever thought about what it means in Romans 8, when Paul wrote: "neither death or life, angels or principalities, powers, things present or things to come, height, dept, or any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God.”
Cancer will not have the last word...tumors...Alzheimer’s...Parkinson’s... pain...heart disease...hospital rooms...hospice...death...Jesus will have the last word.
Again, the good news is not that Jesus will heal all your sicknesses, but that He will forgive you of all your sins.
Forgiveness is God's greatest gift because forgiveness is our greatest need.
Number Four
I want to spend the rest of our time on these four friends, who make a difference in this man’s life. We have all heard the quote by…”Of all the sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, ‘It might have been.’”
None of us want that. All of us want to make a difference. Here are four guys who did, and we might want to take a play out of their playbook. Quickly, six things that are obvious about these guys.
• They cared about their friend.
In fact, they cared enough to do something. That is how you show you care – by what you do. Intentions are wonderful. Plans are wonderful. But the extent of your care is shown by what you do.
Matthew 25 – I was hungry and you fed me. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger and you took me in.
Luke 10 – ask the guy who was beaten and robbed and left by the side of the road to die, who cared? It was the one who stopped and did something.
Are you concerned? What are you doing? And before you look around and get overwhelmed at all the needs you see, let me remind you simply to do for one what you would like to do for everyone. Do you care – do something.
• They believed Jesus was the answer to their friend’s problem.
They believed Jesus was what their friend needed.
Here is the question for us: Do you believe Jesus can make a difference in the lives of those you know? Do you believe Jesus is what they need? And if we do, why don’t we share Jesus with them?
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• The third thing that is obvious is – each of these men, though unable to make a difference alone, they worked together.
In our world today, we call it synergy – the ability to do together what one cannot do alone.
It is a flock of geese which can fly 71% further in a v-formation than they can alone. It is a team of mules that together can pull three times what one can pull alone.
There is a story in Genesis 11 about a group of people who decided to build a tower into heaven – and here was God’s assessment of them – “They are one, and nothing they propose to do is impossible to them.”
Syngery is a body of Christians who together can do what no one individual Christian can. God did know what He was doing when He created the church. We just need to take our God-given talents, come together and go to work.
• A fourth thing I love about these me – they dared to do something different.
Whatever had been tried before had not worked, so rather than giving up, they just tried something. Tearing up a roof was not the normal way of getting help, and there were some obstacles in their way – but what they had done had not worked, so they are willing to risk it.
The lesson for us is not to get hung up on methods. Our message is sacred – method isn’t. You want to make a difference and what you have done has not work – try something different.
• A fifth thing you see in the story is that they were rewarded for their efforts.
Every effort you put forth will not be rewarded or end with a great story to tell. You nor I control the end result. But this I know for sure – no effort on our part, will always, 100% of the time, end with no story to tell. In this case, they got what they came after.
Put that in context today – come to Jesus and what you will discover is a God who loves you, a Gospel that saves you, a church that receives you, a Holy Spirit that lives in you, a mission that inspires you, and a heaven that awaits you, and a story to share so others can have the same.
• And the final thing I see in the story of these four men is that their actions impacted others.
What they did, made a difference, not only in the life of this man, but their actions made a difference in the lives of those who saw their efforts that day. The text says that the people were amazed and praised God.
Question: Has anyone looked at your actions lately and praised God as a result?
Four men made a difference that day. What are you going to do today, to make a difference? Not to impact the world, but to impact the life of someone in this world?
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We have all heard the story of the old man watching the little boy as he walked down the beach picking up one starfish at a time and throwing them back into the ocean. The man approached the lad and asked him what he was doing. He excitedly replied, “I’m throwing starfish into the ocean. The sun is coming up and the tide is going out, and if I don’t throw them back, they will die.”
The old man smiled and looked down the beach at hundreds of starfish on the beach. He said to the lad, “Do you realize there are miles and miles of beach and starfish all along it? You can’t possibly make a difference.”
The little fellow reached down, picked up another starfish, gently tossed it into the sea and said, “It made a difference to that one.”
Here is my question: When today ends, who are you going to point to and be able to say “It made a difference to that one?”
