The Glory of God, the Power of Christ
Notes
Transcript
On one of those days, as he was teaching, Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting there, who had come from every village of Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem. And the power of the Lord was with him to heal.
And behold, some men were bringing on a bed a man who was paralyzed, and they were seeking to bring him in and lay him before Jesus,
but finding no way to bring him in, because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and let him down with his bed through the tiles into the midst before Jesus.
And when he saw their faith, he said, “Man, your sins are forgiven you.”
And the scribes and the Pharisees began to question, saying, “Who is this who speaks blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God alone?”
When Jesus perceived their thoughts, he answered them, “Why do you question in your hearts?
Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven you,’ or to say, ‘Rise and walk’?
But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he said to the man who was paralyzed—“I say to you, rise, pick up your bed and go home.”
And immediately he rose up before them and picked up what he had been lying on and went home, glorifying God.
And amazement seized them all, and they glorified God and were filled with awe, saying, “We have seen extraordinary things today.”
Hermeneutics & Homiletics The inexhaustible Word of God. (It never tires of teaching us!)
At least 8 sermons I could have preached on this passage. I asked myself what it was all about:
Faith? Of the man and his companions
Perseverance? Not letting anything preventing them from getting to Jesus
Forgiveness? Of sins
Skepticism? Of the Pharisees and scribes (teachers)
Healing?
Obedience? He obeyed Jesus command to pick up the bed and go home.
God’s glory?
Love? They loved their friend, Jesus loves the broken and contrite
I was stuck on how to preach it. John MacArthur needed 3 sermons to preach this passage
All of those possibilities are included, and many more lessons could be drawn from this passage. Scripture is inexhaustible.
Let’s focus on what this passage tells us about Jesus, and how God was glorified.
On one of those days, as he was teaching, Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting there, who had come from every village of Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem. And the power of the Lord was with him to heal.
Pharisees: originated with Ezra drawing people back to obedience to the law. They were so concerned about obedience to the law they build walls around the law itself. If the Law of God was a city they were responsible to maintain and keep, then they had decided they needed a fortified wall around it. If the law said do not use God’s name in vain, they would build a wall around that rule and make a new rule to not say his name at all. If you never say the Holy Name of God, then you cant use it in blasphemy. If the law said to keep the Sabbath, and not work, they would add all kinds of rules to keep them away from disobeying that law as well. Their rules were the wall, and God’s rule was the city, so that to protect themselves from assaulting the city, they built a heavy wall around it.
Was this from bad motives? Not necessarily, but over time, it is this legalism that binds people and really, Jesus said no one could stand up or bear the burden of these extra rules. If you think about it, they could not keep the rules God had already given them, so adding more rules did nothing more than condemn them in their own eyes, since no one could keep all of these rules,
Pharisees were more like a political party, they were laypeople, but they had a lot of influence because they worked so hard to be righteous and in a way, that is something to be respected, but over generations it became less about protecting themselves from breaking God’s law and more about enforcing their own.
They were watching Jesus carefully, they had heard of him and were in the front row seats to try to catch him in some error.
Luke includes that the power of the Lord was with him to heal.
This may have been Peter’s house
And behold, some men were bringing on a bed a man who was paralyzed, and they were seeking to bring him in and lay him before Jesus,
Last week we looked at the healing of the leper. The word leper had a broad meaning for them. In those days, they described things by the symptoms. Today, we talk about the actual disease first usually, and then the conditions. The same is true here. He was paralyzed. What caused the paralysis? We do not know more than the Bible tells us. Some think he may have had syphilis, which is often the result of some sin, and can result in paralysis. This could be true as we evaluate that He was forgiven and healed. But we simply cannot be sure, and we know from scripture that we ought to be careful to not assume that someone’s illness is directly linked to their personal sin, although this is always a possibility.
Luke uses the word behold, in other words, listen to this! Some men were bringing him. These men cared for their friend and believed that Jesus had the power to heal him, and now we see that their faith goes beyond just thoughts. Their faith causes them to take action.
but finding no way to bring him in, because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and let him down with his bed through the tiles into the midst before Jesus.
Here is the persistence that love and faith combined will take. Now, sometimes we have the love and persistence to see someone through, to bring them to Jesus, but unless they are willing, we may not always be able to help them in this way. Certainly there is nothing in this text that says the man was brought against his will, that they dragged him along.
I’m sure we all imagine this scene in our minds and shake our heads a little, that these men would go so far to bring him to Jesus they would come through the roof. I found that commentators could not resist speculating on the type of roof, whether it was vandalism, or whether the roof had some sort of tiles that were easily lifted and therefore no damage was done.
In fact, I got a whole history lesson on roofs in that time in Palestine, and I will resist spending too much time on that, because that may be interesting in its own way, but I don’t believe the exact roof type has bearing on what this passage is teaching. Rather, let us acknowledge that these friends went above (quite literally) and beyond what many would have. They loved their friend enough to do extra physical labor for him, to risk being yelled at by the homeowner. They risked looking cheeky so that their friend could have a chance to be touched by Jesus.
Their love resulted in action, and when their initial plan failed, they did not turn around and go back home, they persevered. I think so long as someone does not outright reject Jesus, we should persevere as we can on their behalf. Number one, we should persevere in prayer. We should persevere in love, kindness, gentleness. We should persevere in telling the truth. We should tell the truth with grace. Jesus was full of grace and truth, so we should desire that as well.
And when he saw their faith, he said, “Man, your sins are forgiven you.”
Whose faith Jesus saw is another topic that Bible Scholars spent much energy discussing. Was it the faith of the friends, or the friends and the sick man? Well, I think it is probably both. Again, there is no indication he was not willing to go. There is at least a mustard seed of faith in this man. If there was no faith, he would have refused to come. Jesus can take even a small amount of faith and turn it into a miracle.
Now we see what we need to know and be reminded of again and again: Our God is a forgiving God. Sometimes people wrongly think of God as a different God between the Old Testament and New. Some seem to think in the Old Testament, God was this harsh, rule-giving, punishing God, and in the New Testament he changed. It’s as though some people think he matured and softened in the New Testament. But God was always a forgiving God.
They refused to obey and were not mindful of the wonders that you performed among them, but they stiffened their neck and appointed a leader to return to their slavery in Egypt. But you are a God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and did not forsake them.
Consider my affliction and my trouble, and forgive all my sins.
And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”
Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.
To the Lord our God belong mercy and forgiveness, for we have rebelled against him
who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases,
keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”
For you, O Lord, are good and forgiving, abounding in steadfast love to all who call upon you.
Our God has always been a forgiving God! A longsuffering and patient God. Will he finally judge all? Yes! Will his longsuffering come to end at some point for those who never repent? Yes! But God loves to forgive. He is a forgiving God. And don’t forget that, Christian! Be reminded here and now that God forgives, and those who are in Christ are forgiven, and when you have failed and missed the mark, and come to him in honest humility and repentance, he will forgive again! He is a forgiving God!
But the Pharisees become quite concerned at this point, when Jesus says, “your sins are forgiven you”
The word forgiven here means: let go, sent away, abandoned, to acquit, let loose, to dismiss, to remit. This is where the word remission of sins comes from. Forgiven means all of that. Your sins, when God forgives them, are taken completely away, out of this realm, and only God can do this, and the omnipotent God puts your sins where even He cannot find them again.
Clever people for centuries have posed this question, “Could God create a rock so heavy He could not lift it?” People say that to try to pose a paradox to a believer. If God can create a rock so heavy he cannot lift it, then He lacks to power to do everything. If He cannot create a rock too heavy for him to lift, then he lacks the creative power, and you are left saying how do I answer this? Well, you answer that it is a logical fallacy. God cannot make a rock to heavy for himself to lift because it is logically incoherent to limit God in any way. God is not limited in His creative ability, nor is he limited in strength. Since both his creative abilities and his strength are limitless, it makes no logical sense to think he could build a rock that he could not lift, so the paradox turns out to be a fallacy.
But here is something God does to limit himself. He sends our forgiven sins so far from us that He himself cannot find them again. In other words, they are removed, remitted, caused to cease existing. And that ought to produce a loud Hallelujah as you contemplate that! The only reason we hold on to our forgiven sins is because we are not fully believing God yet, but if you can get to the point of grasping the power of God’s forgiveness found in Christ, you will experience a freedom like you have never felt before.
And the scribes and the Pharisees began to question, saying, “Who is this who speaks blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God alone?”
The Pharisees know there scriptures very well. Only God can forgive sin. We can forgive each other for offenses, but no one can forgive sins against God except God. Anyone other than God who would claim to forgive sins would be a blasphemer. There is really only two options here. Either Jesus is God and authorized to forgive sins, or he is a blasphemer. The Pharisees are right in their theology on this, but they are wrong in their assumptions about Jesus. He is the one who forgives.
They may think at this point they have Jesus cornered. They have been looking for something to use against him, and it may seem to them at this point they have their aha moment, but Jesus was well aware of this;
When Jesus perceived their thoughts, he answered them, “Why do you question in your hearts?
Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven you,’ or to say, ‘Rise and walk’?
Let’s take a moment to think about this. For Jesus, neither statement is easier. He isn’t asking which phrase comes off the tongue more smoothly. He is pointing out that if he were a charlatan, He could leave it right there and say “Your sins are forgiven”. From a human perspective, there is no way to know if this is true or not. I could use the words I forgive you and not mean them. There is no real way for people to verify if someone’s sin is forgiven by God, but Rise and walk, if a fake prophet were to say that, would be immediately verifiable. The bigger miracle is the forgiveness of sins, but the verifiable miracle is healing the man.
The forgiveness of sins is often linked to healing:
Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.
And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.
For elders praying for the sick, and I will be the first to admit this, we ought to be asking the person if they have any sins for which they need to repent....
Luke: An Introduction and Commentary 3. Healing a Paralytic (5:17–26)
Jesus performs the cure that they may know that the Son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins. His words about forgiveness and healing go together. If he can do the one he can do the other. The Jews of the day thought that all sickness was due to sin (cf. John 9:2). ‘R. Alexandri said in the name of R. Ḥiyya b. Abba: A sick man does not recover from his sickness until all his sins are forgiven him’ (Nedarim 41a). Had they been consistent, accordingly they must have accepted the man’s forgiveness!
But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he said to the man who was paralyzed—“I say to you, rise, pick up your bed and go home.”
Now Jesus proves his power over sickness and his ability to forgive sins.
And immediately he rose up before them and picked up what he had been lying on and went home, glorifying God.
And amazement seized them all, and they glorified God and were filled with awe, saying, “We have seen extraordinary things today.”
Luke, Vol. 1—That You May Know the Truth Jesus’ Authority to Forgive Substantiated (vv. 24–26)
Spurgeon wrote:
I think I see him! He sets one foot down to God’s glory, he plants the other to the same note, he walks to God’s glory … he carries his bed to God’s glory, he moves his whole body to the glory of God, he speaks, he shouts, he sings, he leaps to the glory of God.