Authority
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Grace to you and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. It is with great joy that I share in the Word with the saints and faithful believers of Durbin Memorial Baptist Church.
I want to begin this morning with this question: Who has the right to forgive an offense?
In that same realm, if you have offended someone, who should you seek forgiveness from?
This may sound like a silly and basic line of questioning, but I think when we peal it back, we will see that we often have issues with getting this right.
As a pastor there can be times when I am counseling with someone and after walking through whatever the situation may be, and the person I am counseling may express deep remorse for something they have done that hurt another person. And then comes a deep, gut-wrenching question, “Pastor, can I ever be forgiven?”
Well the answer to that question is certainly yes, but we have to clarify who is extending the forgiveness. It certainly is not from me. I, the pastor, cannot give you forgiveness for something you didn’t do to me. We can sometimes be tempted to slip into the belief that the pastor or priest is given some divine power to absolve you of your sins. But when you’ve hurt someone, it is not me that you need forgiveness from. It is from God, because any sin—any unrighteous deed—is ultimately an offense to the righteous God, and it is from the specific person whom you have offended.
So how do we request forgiveness from these sources? We request forgiveness by going to the source, confessing our sin, and repenting, that is making amends by turning the other direction.
This plays out in reality by first calling out to God through prayer, confessing our specific sins, rebuking the harmful and sinful behavior, and sincerely desiring while taking steps to not do the sinful behavior any more. This results in forgiveness:
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
At this part in counseling, everyone is all in. We’re willing to give up a prayer and say we will commit to not messing up anymore. And while God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, we must remember that there is another person from whom we must seek forgiveness: the person we offended! This is where things get a little tougher in the counseling session. “You want me to go and ask for forgiveness?” “You mean I have to go and talk to them?” “Isn’t God’s forgiveness enough?” “Can’t I volunteer at a homeless shelter or something instead?”
But from the teaching of Jesus, we can’t honestly seek God’s forgiveness without trying to make things right with the person we’ve hurt through our sin.
So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.
In the Sermon on the Mount, we see Jesus teaching us that we have the righteous responsibility of seeking reconciliation with the person we have offended. We can’t even worship right when we haven’t sought to rectify the situation we have caused with another person. We’re called to own the situation, go to the person, confess our specific sins, rebuking the harmful/sinful behavior, while sincerely desiring and taking steps not to do the sinful/harmful behavior towards them any more.
You may have noticed if you were paying attention when we were explaining how to ask for God’s forgiveness, that the process was the same! That’s because it is! Just as we see our offense behavior and ask for God’s forgiveness where we have sinned against Him, we are to do the same with the people we have sinned against.
So let’s go back to the original questions we asked at the onset of the sermon.
We asked, if you have offended someone, who should you seek forgiveness from?
Answer: God and the person you have offended.
We also asked: Who has the right to forgive an offense?
Answer: The person whom you have offended.
Though we will be coming at it from different angles, both of these questions give us a framework through which to better understand the passage we are working through this morning.
We are going to be exploring the idea of Authority. Who has the right to forgive. And we are exploring the idea of action backing up belief.
Let’s ask one more question before we jump in to Matthew 9. Which is easier, to express a prayer asking for forgiveness, or to go to the person you’ve offended and make amends?
In practice I can tell you that many people view praying as easier than acting. But that is because we may not be as sincere as we claim to be. Sincerity necessitates action.
Today we will see both that belief requires action and that Jesus is the ultimate authority with the right to forgive our sin.
With that in mind, if you have not already, turn in your Bibles to Matthew 9. Today we will be looking at the first 8 verses. This passage comes in a collection of narratives highlighting the great authority of King Jesus. For the last three weeks we have highlighted Jesus’ ability to heal the sick, calm the sea, and cast out demons. We’ve also seen a variety of responses to Jesus. In some cases people halfheartedly desired to follow Him on their own terms, others got on the boats and clung to Him in the storm, and last week we saw an entire town repulsed by His presence. In Today’s narrative we will continue to see a varied response to Christ the King.
Let’s begin in verse 1.
And getting into a boat he crossed over and came to his own city.
Verse 1 of Matthew 9 naturally serves as a transitional verse from Chapter 8. Jesus has left the country of the Gadarenes and travelled back across the sea of Galilee to the town of Capernaum. Capernaum would serve as the hub, the home-base of Jesus’ earthly ministry. I don’t want to dwell too long on this verse, but as we are walking through Matthew chapters 8 and 9 and seeing the various responses of Jesus, we would be remiss not to mention that after the town begs Him to leave the region in the previous scene, Jesus does just that. He leaves.
There is something to note in the fact that where God is rejected, His presence is not felt. This is not to say that God is not omniscient or omnipresent. Those are unchanging attributes of God and we will see the omniscience of Jesus even in this story we are working through this morning. This lack of God’s presence is akin to the what can be found in 2 Kings 17. In which God is angry at the rampant Idolatry and pagan practices in Israel. It says that the Lord was very angry with Israel and removed them out of His sight.... the Lord rejected all the descendants of Israel and afflicted them until He had cast them out of His sight. Make a note to read through 2 Kings 17 for more context there. But the point is that while not losing His omnipresence, as a form of judgment, God’s presence is not felt in places where He is rejected. You can see more examples of this in Romans 1 where those who do not honor God exchanged honoring God for the created thing and thus God “gave them up to dishonorable passions.”
As I said, we aren’t going to dwell here as it is not the primary purpose of the text this morning, but we should note that were there is a rejection of God there is a lack of presence. We often think about this from the national or community level, and I think that is appropriate contextually. But if we are only concerned with the national or community levels we can be tempted to think ourselves as the righteous victim and we end up just pouting about the wickedness around us. I don’t think that’s helpful. A more helpful application would be to ensure you and your household are receptive to Jesus. That you desire His presence. That you cling to His Word. Jesus is the ruler of Kings on Earth. We can’t control what happens at the national level, but we have been called to steward our lives for the glory of God. We have been called to personally have transformed hearts, minds, affections, wills, relationships, and purpose regardless of the culture around us. We’ve been called to cultivate a culture of honoring the Lord in our lives, our homes, and our church regardless of the political and moral landscape around us. Church, may we cherish the presence of Christ by seeking Him in all that we do. Join me in this endeavor.
But let’s get back to the primary story we will be looking at today: the forgiveness of sins and healing of the paralytic. Verse 2:
And behold, some people brought to him a paralytic, lying on a bed. And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Take heart, my son; your sins are forgiven.”
This is a story that is told three times in the gospels. It is recorded in Mark 2 and Luke 5. Those complimentary accounts give the added details. We see that Jesus was preaching the Word of God in a home. There were so many gathered together that the place was backed out to the brim. This group of men were trying to bring their paralyzed friend to Jesus, knowing that Jesus can heal. But they are unable to bring him in the conventional way due to the large crowd. So they climb up the exterior stair case of the house that leads to the roof. Once their they shuffle around the tiles and make a hole to actually lower their friend down before Jesus. Now I can only imagine what this would’ve been like for the people in the room! Think about it if it were to happen to us today! I’m giving a sermon and then all of a sudden someone starts sawing through the roof! Then comes a Mission Impossible style entrance! We’d all be up in arms! And I am quite certain that it was a wild scene that day as well.
So we have to ask ourselves an important question here. Mark and Luke give all those details of the same account. Matthew simply says, “some brought to him a paralytic, lying on a bed.” The question we must ask is, “Why did Matthew leave all those juicy details out?” Some may go further and ask if this is a contradiction! Certainly Matthew would have included such incredible details, right?
Well first we should note that there is no contradiction, absence of a detail is not a denial of a detail. It would have been contradictory if Matthew said the men did NOT lower the paralytic to through the roof. So then why DID Matthew gloss over the details? That is because each of the Gospels are highlighting different, yet complimentary aspects of Jesus’ life and so we should not expect each perspective to give all of the same details. As we have mentioned for the last few weeks, the entirety of the book of Matthew is focused on the Authority of Jesus Christ as King of kings. We’ve seen His authority over diseases, the seas, and demons, we’ve seen Him speak with authority in the Sermon on the Mount. Even in the Great Commission at the end of the book of Matthew Jesus states, “All AUTHORITY in heaven and on earth have been given to Me.” The book of Matthew consistently focuses on that theme and so should we as we read through it.
So to put that into practice here in Matthew 9:2, Matthew does focus on how the paralytic gets before Jesus, because the actions of the friends, while valiant and honorable, are not the center of the narrative. Rather, it is Christ’s authority to forgive sins. Those are things for us to talk about and to consider, but in this moment, in this exposition of Matthew 9, the emphasis of text and thus the center of our focus is on Christ.
Jesus looks to the man and says, “take heart, my son; your sins are forgiven.” Jesus sees the faith of the paralytic and his friends through the actions they have taken. The point isn’t so much so that we should be lowering our friends through the roof, but rather that the Lord sees when we are desperate for Him and faithful to Him! These men have come to the end of themselves and their own abilities and in faith they have brought their needs before Jesus. The question is their faith-filled hearts is not whether Jesus COULD heal the paralytic, but if He WOULD heal the man. They trust that Jesus is sufficient. Its like the Leper and the Centurion from chapter 8, fully reliant and dependent on the WILL of Jesus.
But what is interesting in this encounter is that Jesus does not immediately heal the paralysis that afflicted the man, rather He forgives the man of his sins. Why didn’t He heal the man first? I wonder what was going through the head of the men and the paralyzed man at this point. Was their joy at this declaration? Was there shock? Disappointment? We will see what the crowd thinks in a moment.
But before we get into that I think it is important for us to see what Jesus did. Jesus addressed the spiritual need before ever addressing the physical. In the church, or even in general life really, we often get this backward. We’re willing to do something to address the physical needs someone may have without ever addressing the spiritual needs. We’re willing to participate in humanitarian deeds, but not willing to proclaim the gospel. Meeting needs is a good thing, commended and commanded in Scripture, but all of those efforts should be used as aids in addressing the spiritual needs of the individual.
When the physical needs of the paralytic were brought before Jesus, He responds by addressing the spiritual needs. The modern reader may be off put by the seeming lack of concern for why the person was there. Those in attendance that day were off put as well, but for different reasons.
And behold, some of the scribes said to themselves, “This man is blaspheming.”
Some of the scribes, those were the local experts on the law of Moses, these religious and political leaders of the day who packed out the house to listen to Jesus, see what He says to the man and they accuse Jesus of blaspheming. What is blaspheming? Blaspheme is insulting God, it is detracting from the glory or honor of God. So why would this group of Law experts, see what Jesus is doing here and think that it is Blaspheme? well because only God can forgive sin! Read through the Old Testament! Look to Exodus, to the Levitical Law, read through the proclamations of the Prophet Isaiah, all throughout you will see that it is God alone who blots out transgressions and forgives sin. We also see a process through which God gives forgiveness. There are sacrifices to be made. They are in a home listening to a Man speak, not in the Temple! So from the Scribes perspective, this must be blaspheme! This Jesus, if but a man, has no AUTHORITY to forgive sins!
Who on EARTH does this man Jesus think that He is? Does He think that He is God!?
But as we have seen demonstrated throughout this book and again attested in this moment, Jesus IS God. He does have the authority to forgive sin. Look just to the next verse!
But Jesus, knowing their thoughts, said, “Why do you think evil in your hearts?
Pause right here to see the divinity of Jesus! As we’ve progressed through this narrative, there has only been one person to speak out loud. We aren’t given any dialogue or plea from the paralyzed man or his friends. We see that the scribes had muttered their musings under their breath amongst themselves. But the only one speaking boldly and publically is Jesus. Yet Jesus looks straight to the heart of both groups. He sees and commends the bold faith of the paralytic and his friends and rebukes the evil in the hearts of the scribes. Don’t overlook this point! Especially as many claim Jesus to be just a man! In His divine omniscience, Jesus sees the hearts, He knows the minds of every person in this room. We read in 1 Chronicles that the Lord searches ALL hearts and understands every plan and thought. We are seeing God-incarnate in this interaction in Matthew. This is the Living Word, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him whom we must give an account. Hebrews of 4:12-13.
What does this mean for us? It means that we must be aware that we cannot fool God with our words when He sees to the core of our being! In this case neither the paralytic and his friends nor the scribes seemed to attempting to hide who they were but even if they had been, they could not pull the wool over the eyes of the all seeing God. God is not fooled by our scholastic achievements, our political clout, or our physical well being. In all cases He sees to the heart and the heart that refuses to recognize Jesus as the Authority He is an evil heart indeed.
Next in our narrative Jesus provides the crowd with more evidence of His authority.
For which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise and walk’?
I want to pause here for another moment so that we don’t over look what’s happening. Jesus is using a rhetorical question to illustrate His point: His divinity.
Really dwell upon this question though. Which is easier? For Jesus to say, Your sins are forgiven, or to look at the man who had been paralyzed for some time and had to be repelled into the room because there was no ability for the man to walk on his own, and say get up and walk?
The point being made in this argument is that from human perspective, it IS easier to SAY your sins are forgiven. Why is that easier? Because there is no empirical verification. Humans aren’t witness to one another’s eternal judgment. It is appointed for each of us to die once and after that comes judgment. The audience could not test the validity of Christ’s extension of forgiveness of sin. But If Jesus were to say get up and walk, that could be tested. They could see that. And that matters because the Jewish Scribes would have known well the connection between sin and ailments. We don’t know how this man became paralyzed. It could have been that he was born that way. He could have gotten some disease, or it could’ve been the direct result of a sinful behavior that he participated in. But regardless, the tie between all ailments and sin is that ailments only exist because of sin! Before the fall of man, there was no disease or pain. We know from Revelation that there is coming a day after the eradication of sin that pain and ailments will be no more. For Jesus then to heal this man with His word would be a tangible evidence that Jesus also has the authority to forgive this man of His sin!
He says as much in the next verse!
But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he then said to the paralytic—“Rise, pick up your bed and go home.”
And would you guess what happens!
And he rose and went home.
Jesus Christ not only proclaims His divinity through the forgiving of sins, but here presents His authority through the removal of sin’s effects.
How does the crowd respond?
When the crowds saw it, they were afraid, and they glorified God, who had given such authority to men.
At first glance, it seems like a fitting conclusion. Everyone saw it and they were afraid, that word is often used to describe not horror but awe. The crowd was filled with revering awe and wonder at what they had seen in that moment. That word describes the feeling of a person who is in the presence of someone infinitely superior to one’s self. They glorified God and contemplated what He had done, but there is a bit of sadness in this conclusion. The vast majority those bewildered by what they had seen still lacked faith in Jesus. Though they glorified God, they did not see that Jesus is the God Man. They knew something miraculous had happened that day. They rightly and naturally responded with terror or amazement essentially saying, “Wow, God, this is a great sight to see! In all my life I ain’t never seen nothing like this!” But yet they still lacked faith in Jesus. And I’m not just making this us. Jesus would address the city of Capernaum later in the book of Matthew and say, Matthew 11:23-24 “And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You will be brought down to Hades. For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I tell you that it will be more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom than for you.””
One of the might works being references by Jesus in Matthew 11 is what we have read today in Matthew 9. Seeing the spectacle of Jesus’ Power wasn’t enough. Being amazing wasn’t enough. Wondering over the crazy things they saw wasn’t the point.
The point of the story we read this morning is not that the paralytic man gets healed. That is a nice outcome and we can wonder at the great power of Jesus to do so. But the point of the story we read this morning IS to declare to us that Jesus IS the AUTHORITY to forgive sin.
In the onset of this message we asked the question, who has the right to forgive an offense? We said the person you have offended. In the narrative this morning, we are given no indication that Jesus had ever had an interpersonal interaction with this man, yet Jesus extends forgiveness. We have seen through His act of healing that He has the authority to forgive sin. All of this is used to confirm for us this morning that Jesus is God! When we sin, when we fall short of the glory of God, when our actions are defined by unrighteousness, we are sinning against God, we are sinning against Jesus, we are grieving the Holy Spirit. Jesus has the power and authority to forgive sins and He does by grace through faith in Him. Through faith in Him, not as a spectacle, but as our Savior, not a amusement, but our Authority.
Douglas Sean O’Donnell made a profound note on this passage. He said, “If you have leprosy or some other terrible skin disease, I can’t promise you that Jesus will heal your leprosy. If you have a child or someone you love who is dying, I can’t promise you that Jesus will cure him or her. If you have a fever, I can’t promise you that Jesus will cool it. If you’re paralyzed I can’t promise you that Jesus will heal you. But if you are a sinner who knows that you are as helpless as a crippled man lowered through a ceiling mat, I can promise you that if you have faith in Jesus and his death and resurrection—the ultimate display of his power and authority and compassion—he will forgive your sin.”
I want to briefly return to that rhetorical question Jesus asked the scribes. Matthew 9:5
For which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise and walk’?
From the human perspective, the first is easier to say than the latter. But in practicality, I want us to know this this morning: The Paralytic man that Jesus healed would at some day die. The healing of his affliction was a temporal blessing. But to have forgiveness of sin, is an eternal blessing! Jesus accomplished the temporal healing by the power of His Word, He accomplished the eternal forgiveness of sins by the power of His blood.
What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
What can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
When the Omniscient Jesus forgave the paralytic man of his sin, He knew that the price for that forgiveness would ultimately be paid by Himself on the cross. Christ died to give forgiveness with all authority to all who believe in Him.
My question as we wrap up this morning is this: Is Jesus your Amusement or your Authority.
If you don’t know, reach out today.
Let’s pray.