Four Friends and a Paralytic

Good evening! Let’s pray:

Heavenly Father, please speak to us through your word and by your Spirit. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

We live in a world awash with sickness. We’re told the NHS is being overwhelmed by ever-increasing demand. I added to it last week by turning up for my flu jab. We are literally a sick society. So what do we need? My title this evening is ‘Four Friends and a Paralytic’. After a brilliant break for our events week and Glen Scrivener last Sunday, we’re back to the Gospel of Mark and Mark 2.1-12. Here’s Mark 2.1 again:

And when [Jesus] returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home.

A word on Capernaum. Jesus grew up in Nazareth. But he burst on to the public scene after he was baptised by John, and Matthew 4.17 tells us that when Jesus heard that John had been arrested:

…he withdrew into Galilee. And leaving Nazareth he went and lived in Capernaum by the sea…

So Capernaum, on the north-west shore of the Sea of Galilee, was Jesus’ home town. And he had been turning it upside-down, by his teaching, his healing of disease, and his casting out of demons. Mark 2.1.28:

And at once his fame spread everywhere throughout all the surrounding region of Galilee.

Then after he healed Simon Peter’s mother-in-law (Mark 2.1.32):

That evening at sunset they brought to him all who were sick or oppressed by demons. And the whole city was gathered together at the door. And he healed many who were sick…

Try and imagine the impact of that. Everyone wanted a bit of him. So when he came back home to Capernaum after a preaching tour of Galilee, the result was inevitable. Mark 2.1-2:

And when [Jesus] returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home. And many were gathered together, so that there was no more room, not even at the door. And he was preaching the word to them.

So if you hadn’t camped out all night to get to the front of the crowd, there was no chance of getting close. Not unless you were brazen and creative. And we’ll come to four guys who were exactly that. Before we do – a reminder that Matt drew our attention to the fact that there are three occasions in Mark when Jesus was explicit about why he, the Son of God, came to earth as a man – his purpose statements. The first, is in Mark 2.1.38, where Jesus says:

Let us go on to the next towns, that I may preach there also, for that is what I came for.

He came to preach. The second is in Mark 2.2.17. Jesus is getting a tongue-lashing from the self-righteous, holier-than-thou religious types who regularly found reasons to object to the good that he did:

[Jesus] said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”

Sick people need a doctor. Sinful people (like us) need Jesus. He came to call sinners. More on that from Matt next week. Then the third time Jesus says why he came is in Mark 10.45, where he says:

…the Son of Man [that’s him] came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

He came to pay the price for our forgiveness by dying for our sins on the cross. The Christian hope is not merely for short-term physical healing now. It is for the coming day of resurrection. If you missed the morning series on 1 Corinthians 15, give it a listen online for the apostle Paul’s mind-blowing teaching on the resurrection of the body. Jesus came not primarily to heal our sickness, but to forgive our sin. And this incident we’re looking at today drives that home in a very striking and memorable way. This story is like a big, bold, visual aid displaying before our eyes that truth – that Jesus is the doctor of our sin-sick souls. I have two headings:

1. Jesus meets our deepest need

Look on to Mark 2.3-4:

And they came, bringing to him a paralytic carried by four men. And when they could not get near him because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him, and when they had made an opening, they let down the bed on which the paralytic lay.

Jesus is teaching. A paralysed man has some faithful friends. They believe that Jesus can heal him. With good reason they have serious confidence in the power of Jesus. And they’re not just talk. Their faith goes into action. They can’t get near Jesus because of the crowd, so up they go onto the roof. They rip a hole in the roof. They lower the man down through the hole on his mat – a pretty hair-raising experience I imagine. The paralysed man lands on the floor in the middle of the crowd right in front of Jesus. Then what? Jesus heals him? No. Not yet. Things take an unexpected turn. Listen to this. Mark 2.5:

And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”

Jesus is a good doctor. He sees the presenting problem – physical paralysis. Serious enough, you might think. But Jesus sees behind the physical issue to the yet more serious issue – what we might call spiritual paralysis caused by sin. This man’s relationship with God is dead. And that is potentially fatal for all eternity. That is the priority. So that’s what Jesus deals with.

“Son, your sins are forgiven.”

That’s what Jesus does. He cures our greatest sickness, which is sin – with its consequences of guilt, just condemnation, and eternal death. What is sin? It’s our rejection of God and his will for our lives. He’s been like a loving Father to us. And we’ve wanted nothing to do with him. Many others get hurt by our particular sins. But they are like symptoms of a disease. And when you get to the root of all sins, you find our sin against God. And, to use another image, that Jesus himself often used, that is like a massive mountain of debt that we owe to God.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer tells us that we have a black hole in our budget of £22 billion. Apparently in the last financial year the government borrowed £122 billion, and our debt is £2.7 trillion. But that’s nothing to the debt that we owe God because of our sin. We have a mountain of debt to God. We need our debts to be cancelled – in other words, forgiven. But how and by whom? After all, when debt is cancelled, it's not as if it vanishes into thin air. When a debt is written off, the cost is still paid. It's just that the burden of the debt falls on someone else. How can we be forgiven and by whom? Only by Jesus, and only through what Jesus did when he died on the cross to pay off the debt mountain we owe to God. That Jesus died for our sins is the measure of how vast is our debt.

“Son, [said Jesus to the paralysed man] your sins are forgiven.”

Whatever the paralysed man and his four faithful friends thought he needed most, what he really needed was forgiveness. And so do we. We need our debt to God to be cancelled. And our only hope is Jesus. What is our deepest need? It is for our sin to be forgiven. Jesus meets our deepest need. That’s point one.

2. Come to Jesus for forgiveness

Take a look now at Mark 2.6-7:

Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, “Why does this man speak like that? He is blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?”

Those self-righteous holier-than-thou religious types get one thing right at this point. Their hostile reaction is to think: “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” In other words, who does this man think he is? God? Yes. Exactly. Mark 2.8-9:

And immediately Jesus, perceiving in his spirit that they thus questioned within themselves, said to them, “Why do you question these things in your hearts? Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven’, or to say, ‘Rise, take up your bed and walk’?

Jesus isn’t just a good doctor. He is the divine doctor. He is fully God and fully man. Look at the signs of his divinity here:

First, he sees right into the hearts not only of the paralysed man but also of his own enemies.

Secondly, he exercises the divine right to forgive sins. Only God can wipe away the debt of sin that is owed to him. And when he does, he pays the price. When Jesus forgives sin, he is deliberately setting himself up for that day when the cost of sin will fall on him as he hangs dying on that cross. He pays our debt – as only God can.

And then thirdly, as the icing on the cake, if I can say that reverently, Jesus heals the man’s physical paralysis as well. Why does he do that? Does he have compassion on this suffering man? Of course he does. But that’s not why he heals him. He tells us why. Mark 2.10-12:

But that you may know that the Son of Man [that’s Jesus] has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he said to the paralytic— “I say to you, rise, pick up your bed, and go home.” And he rose and immediately picked up his bed and went out before them all, so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, “We never saw anything like this!”

And so Jesus showed his awe-inspiring divine power over disease, as an astonishing visual aid of his divine power and authority to do the far greater but invisible miracle of forgiving sin.

My own father became a paralytic. He died a few years ago, but as he got old, he lost the use of his legs as the result of damage to his spine. He had some rehabilitation and training at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital in Stanmore. He loved going there because the care was so good. In time my dad slowly got a little bit of movement and strength back in his legs. It was minimal but it was there. After a while, he was able briefly to stand unaided for the first time since the collapse of his legs. Then I had a phone call from my mum. She said she’d just heard from my dad that they had him standing with parallel bars, and he’d been able to walk from one end of the parallel bars to the other. He was completely exhausted, but he was over the moon. My mum said she just had to tell someone, so she’d picked up the phone to me. Imagine that multiplied a thousand times, and you’re getting towards the joy of that paralytic instantly and totally healed and forgiven by Jesus. If we are trusting in Jesus, he will give us new bodies on resurrection day. But for now, he is the doctor of our sin-sick souls. We all need his touch. We need to accept his divine authority, listen to his diagnosis, and submit to his treatment.

Julian Barnes in his novel The Sense of An Ending explores the way that things done thoughtlessly in young adulthood (indeed during student years) can lie dormant even for decades and then blow up in the faces of those who have done them. That’s what happens to the main character. And he reflects on what happens in these words:

My younger self had come back to shock my older self with what that self had been…Why had I reacted [in that way]? Hurt pride, pre-exam stress, isolation? Excuses, all of them. And no, it wasn’t shame I now felt, or guilt, but something rarer in my life and stronger than both: remorse. A feeling which is more complicated, curdled and primeval. Whose chief characteristic is that nothing can be done about it: too much time has passed, too much damage has been done, for amends to be made.

It’s a bleak portrayal of life lived with no knowledge of Jesus and the hope that he brings. Because it’s right that we can do nothing to save ourselves from the guilt and remorse of our past sin when it catches up with us in this life. Nor can we save ourselves from the day of reckoning that lies beyond. There is a Day of Judgement coming, when our debts will be called in, and we will have to give account. But Jesus can save us. He has paid our debt with his own blood shed on the cross. Our only hope is to turn to Jesus and trust him. The point of this Lord’s Supper that we’re sharing in this evening is to drive that home to our hearts. So what about us? How do we receive this forgiveness? There are five things that we need to do.

First, we must recognise how deep in debt we are. If we don't, we won't see that anything needs to be done, nor will we see that our debt is totally unpayable by us.

Secondly, we must realise that Jesus paid our debts on the cross. If we don't, we won't know that anything can be done, and we won't know who to go to.

Thirdly, we must ask God to cancel our debt because it has been transferred to Jesus. If we're not prepared to ask, we're effectively saying that we don't want God to cancel our debt thank you very much. We'll deal with the situation ourselves. And we can’t.

Fourthly, we must receive forgiveness and believe God's statement that our debt is cancelled. The promise is crystal clear – as the Bible says in 1 John 1.9:

If we confess our sins, [God] is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins…

Finally, we must respond by committing ourselves to a debt-free lifestyle from now on, with the help of God’s Spirit, and always asking for forgiveness when we fail and fall, as we do.

We’re not that paralysed man, lowered through the roof into the middle of that crowd. But we are just as surely right in front of the eyes of Jesus – full as they are of love and grace. So let’s end by asking for his forgiveness right now, in the quietness of our own hearts. Perhaps you’re well used to doing this – even as we did earlier in our time together this evening. Perhaps for you this will be the first time. Either way, the living God is listening. Let’s pray:

Lord God, I see how great the debt is that I owe you because of my sin. I can never pay you what I owe. But I know that when your Son Jesus died, he paid my debt for me. Please forgive me. Thank you that because of Jesus, all my debt to you past, present and future is wiped away. I am forgiven. From now on I want to live for Jesus. Please help me. Amen.

If we prayed that and meant it, then like that paralysed man who had four good friends, we have found forgiveness. That is God's promise.