FBC Hull 9-21-03 a.m. service
The God Who Heals
Luke 5:17-25
Primary Purpose: God desires to heal us in all areas of our lives, especially of
sin sickness
Broken--the man in our passage today was broken. A man who was
paralyzed and laid on a mat all day long. The Pharisees and Sadducees
would have said of him that he brought the trouble on himself. They would
have taught him that his sin was the cause of this problem. He had done
something to offend Almighty God and God was unhappy with him. It didn’t
matter that the man might not be able to think of any sin or guilt that he knew
of. That is the way they looked at sickness.
So when the man hears about Jesus and his miracles, he believes that if
he can only get to Jesus then he can be healed. He goes to Jesus and find out
that Jesus can do even more than he expected. (Read Scripture)
Here we have a familiar story of men bringing a paralytic to Jesus.
This is one of the few times we see Jesus teaching inside. It was very
crowded and they couldn’t get through the crowd, so they go up to the
rooftop, which sometimes was open as a patio. Their expectations and faith
all rest on Jesus. They are determined to get to Jesus any way possible.
They don’t wait for Him to come outside. They dig through the tiled roof and
lower the man on a mat before Jesus. They demonstrate great faith in Jesus.
Jesus watches and waits till they have completed their task. He could
have stopped them, but then we wouldn’t have the testimony of their faith. It
is this faith that Jesus honors. He openly forgives the man of his first
concern-- his sins. He is claiming a authority that belongs to only God.
It’s good to know that God desires to cleanse us and heal us of sin. In
Isaiah 1:18 the Lord says to Israel.
“Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord. Though your sins
are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as
crimson, they shall be like wool.”
God desires to cleanse us all of our sins. I can’t do that by myself.
Only God can forgive sins. But Ps 32:1-2 says
“Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are
covered. Blessed is the man whose sins the Lord does not count against
him.” Notice it doesn’t say that blessed is the man who doesn’t sin. There is
no such animal. The Bible says that we all fall short of the glory of God. The
issue isn’t whether or not you sin. The issue is whether or not your going to
the right source to be cleansed.
We are cleansed by something that Jesus called repentance. That
means a turning from sins. A change in the direction of our lives. I heard
about a man who saw his dog walking across his lawn with his neighbors
dead cat in his mouth. The man was horrified to see that the dog had killed
the cat. He was determined to try and not allow his neighbor know about it.
So, he took the cat from the dog and proceeded to wash the cat and clean it,
brush it’s fur etc. That night he sneaks over to the neighbors house and
places the cat on the back porch. Then sneaks back home feeling good that
he won’t be discovered. The next morning, he is going to his car for work
when he sees his neighbor visibly shaken. “What’s wrong” he says. The
neighbor replies, “It is the strangest thing I ever seen. Fluffy got hit by a car
yesterday. We had a funeral service for it in the backyard. But, then we got
up this morning to find the hole empty and the cat clean and on the back
porch.”
The man tried to clean the cat outwardly, but he couldn’t change the
fact that the cat was dead. A lot of people try to do the same thing with God.
They try to change their outward appearance. They may give up a few sins or
stop doing some things. They feel better about themselves and maybe even
feel that God is pleased to. But, God doesn’t desire to just change us on the
outside. Scripture calls us dead in our transgressions and sins. Jesus doesn’t
tell us to be changed on the outside first. This was the problem of the
Pharisees. Jesus told the Pharisees in Matthew 23:27-28 “Woe to you,
teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed
tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but ont he inside are full of dead
men’s bones and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you
appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and
wickedness.”
He tells us we must be born again, that we must repent, that we must
change our hearts. We have a sin problem, but Jesus has the solution.
So, Jesus sees the man and his friends and deals with the greater
weakness first-- that of sin. The Pharisees are outraged. From this point on
the opposition to Jesus grows among the Pharisees and Sadducees. I like it
that they didn’t have the nerve to say anything to Jesus, but that Jesus read
their thoughts. He proposes a test. Let the miracle of healing be proof that he
has the authority to forgive sins. Then he heals the man completely. He
makes what is broken-- whole. He takes away the sin sickness then the
physical sickness. His is Jehovah-Rapha, the God who heals. he cares about
the physical sickness. But, also the sin sickness that seperates us from God.
The apostle John said in 1 John that if I say that this is not a problem for me I
lie. But, If I willingly come to Jesus, just as the paralytic man did--full of
faith. If I’m willing to confess my sin and turn to God, then He will make me
white as snow. He will cleanse me like no soap on earth can. He makes me
pure because of His blood that was shed for me.
