Mark 2:1-12 – More Than Forgiven
It’s hunting season and two friends were out hunting. One was always bragging about what a good shot he was. About that time a duck flew over. He took aim and fired… the duck flew on unscathed.
He paused a minute and said, "My friend, you are now witnessing a miracle. There files a dead duck."
Today we are looking at miracles, at least one in particular. As we continue on in our 40 Days of Prayer and Fasting, with the theme of “Aligning our Lives to Christ’s Passion”, we come to this week’s theme – People are hurting. The 1st week we saw that people are important to god. Last week we saw that people need each other. This week we see that people hurt. I want us to turn in our Bibles to Mark 2 (p708). We’re going to look at a story that is also found in Matt.9 and Luke 5. Read.
Now, let’s look at what’s going on here. Jesus is still early on in His earthly ministry. He’s been preaching for a year, maybe a little more. And His popularity is growing. People love to hear His preaching. But soon, when they grew not to like what He was saying, they tried to get rid of Him. Not much different with church folk today. Easier to blame the messenger than accept the message.
Anyway, Jesus was filling buildings with his preaching, and He wound up back in his hometown of Capernaum. He was born in Bethlehem, raised in Nazareth, but spent His adult life in coming back to Capernaum. And this particular time, He filled the building. Whether it was a personal residence or whether it was a synagogue – a Jewish place of worship – is hard to say. Whatever the case, Jesus packed the place. Everybody loves a good show, and Jesus could do that. But the best was yet to come.
Now, this place was so crowded that it was standing-room-only, even to the point of not letting anybody else in. Which would be a problem for one paralyzed man, who wanted to get to Jesus to be healed of his lameness. Well, good thing for him, the man had 4 good friends. And not just good friends, but creative as well. What they did was go around the outside of the building to the outside stairs. From pictures I’ve seen, the stairs were like a fire escape. The stairs ran up along the wall of the stone building to the roof.
Now, the roof was not made of stone or even brick, but rather thatched straw. It’s possible that the roof had a trap door, or it’s possible that they started from nothing. Either way, the man’s friends, after carrying him up to the roof, tunneled a hole big enough for him to be let down through horizontally.
Now, look at v5 – I think it’s significant. No doubt the paralytic man had faith; otherwise, he would not have gone through the hassle of it all. But Jesus commends the man’s friends for their faith. Understand this: it was their faith that brought the man to place of forgiveness. I wonder: if the salvation of the people around me depended upon my faith, how close to the Lord would they get?
So Jesus saw their faith and said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” In Luke, Jesus calls him “friend”. It was a term of affection, a term of fondness. A term that shows that just perhaps, God isn’t quite as angry at sinners as the church has made Him out to be over the years. Just perhaps God is happy and forgiving when a wayward child returns, and is not quite so adamant to prove to him or her that they were wrong for all those years. At any rate, Jesus declared the man’s sins to be forgiven.
Well, well. This didn’t sit well with the religious folk who were sitting there next to Jesus. They obviously had a place of honor at Jesus’ side. But it wasn’t because they all agreed with each other. No, Jesus had plenty of rebuke for religious folk. In fact, he saved his hardest rebukes for church-folk, because they were the ones who should have known better. And they got quite upset over the fact that this man claimed to have forgiven sins. After all, who but God can forgive sins? By Jesus claiming to be able to do something only God can do. It’s called blasphemy, and it was a serious offense.
Jesus knew their thoughts and responded to them. He asked the question: v9. He didn’t say what was easier to do, just what was easier to say. I mean, it’s easy enough to say, “You’re forgiven”. It’s hard to prove with your senses. Your eyes won’t really tell if another person is forgiven. But your eyes will tell you easily enough if someone can walk or not. It’s easier to tell someone they are forgiven than to tell them to get up and walk.
But Jesus wanted to prove that He could forgive sins. Which is what people really want anyway. They want to know that they are OK with God. They want to know they will go to heaven when they die. They want to have a clean conscience. People do not always want to make the changes in their lives, and to give up their selfishness, but nonetheless, to be right with God drives us all.
So, to prove that He could forgive sins, Jesus healed this man. V10 – those 3 dots mean the world. So that people would know that Jesus could forgive sins, He also healed this man’s body. V11-12. And people walked away from it all amazed. They couldn’t believe what they had just seen. Jesus made the impossible probable.
I know who I am talking to today. I know that most of you have received Jesus’ forgiveness. I know that most of you walked up to Him one day and said that you had a problem, and Jesus forgave you. I know this. But I also know that some of you are still hurting. For so many years, it was said that if you give your life to Jesus, all your pains go away. If you ask Him to forgive you, you will be all better. But from what I have seen, that’s just not true. I see forgiven people who just ache with hurts.
Some of you were hurt by your parents, in particular your fathers. Maybe they were there, maybe not. Either way, some of you ache for that relationship that makes you feel hollow. Your parents separated, perhaps, and that was the worst thing in the world that could have happened. Because you understood that something that existed before you were even conceived came to an end. And you don’t know how to handle it.
Some of you were abused. Someone, a stranger or someone else, took advantage of your youth or your weakness or your ignorance or your trust, and they violated and scarred you.
Some of you have been hurt by churches or Christians. Although I wish I could say it doesn’t happen, it does. Someone you trusted, prayed with, prayed for, worked with, cried with, shared with… lets you down. Behaves in a way certainly un-Christian. You expected too much. You expected perfection. You expected a good example. But they let you down. And you’ve never gotten over it.
Some of you hurt with loneliness. You wonder why you don’t fit in anywhere. You think that everybody else must know something or have something or believe something or do something that just doesn’t apply to you. You think that maybe there’s some unwritten secret club that you just weren’t invited to be part of. You just don’t feel like you fit in.
Some of you hurt with rejection. Divorce. Abandonment. Betrayal. Some of you hurt with disappointment. Dead-end job. Loveless marriage. Embarrassing family. Pointless church. Unfulfilled dreams. A body that’s wasting away far too early.
I wish that healing happened instantly for a Christian. It doesn’t happen instantly, but I believe that it can happen. This story of the paralyzed man shows that Jesus wants to forgive you, and Jesus wants to heal you. To get you where you hurt. To reach you where you’ve hidden for so long. Andrew Murray, a great Christian man of the past said this: “Jesus came to deliver men from sin and sickness that He might make known the love of the Father. In His actions, in His teachings of the disciples and in the work of the apostles, pardon and healing are always found together.”
So how are you doing? No matter how long you have been forgiven, are you healed? Do you hurt? Have you come to Jesus recently, not just for forgiveness, but for healing? They are different, but Jesus showed He can do both. Some of you sit there and know that you are hurting, but you don’t know how to stop. However, some of you sit there in judgement of others and their problems and their woes and their headaches, and you’re no different from the Pharisees sitting next to Jesus. Criticizing what God wants to do in someone else. Thinking that if they just did what you do, then they’d be OK. All the while ignoring your own sense of fulfillment. Because if you were fulfilled in your own walk with the Lord, then you wouldn’t waste time criticizing others.
Listen, we say Jesus lives in our hearts. What kind of a home is that for him? We often feel like we’ve lost our hearts. Folks, if we ignore our hearts, we really can’t find God. Its like looking for Him every place but home. Meanwhile, Jesus asks us, “Will you let me heal you? Will you let me into that broken place? Will you let me show mercy to your heart?”
Listen to the words of the Lord… Psalm 23:1-3 – “The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, He leads me beside quiet waters, He restores my soul.” Psalm 34:18 – “The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” Psalm 147: 3 – “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.”
Broken-hearted. The Hebrew for that one word means that your heart is in many shattered pieces. Binding up the wound implies putting them into a cast, dealing with them. Unfortunately, we often ignore hurts. Like not getting a broken arm fixed right, we try to fix them our own way, and they set wrong, and the problem doesn’t go away. We need to allow Him to re-break us, to hurt us, to bring up the past, so that we can find real healing, deep healing, healing from the Maker Himself.
Folks, will you let Jesus do a deep work today? Will you let Him at your heart? Will you let Him ask the tough questions? Will you let Him restore you and bind you and heal you? Jesus can do it, and He wants to do it. And like forgiveness, it means admitting you need Him, and believing He can help you.
