Who’s Your One?

We are in our “Who’s your one?” series.

Take the material in the back.

Last week: Christians vs. disciples. Not the best but willing. It’s a command to spiritually reproduce.

Sermon notes.

Sometimes we can feel like we are missional minded without realizing our personal role in the mission. To illustrate this better, think about sports for a moment. I love sports, and many of you do as well. We can watch and cheer for our favorite teams but never actually step onto a court or field and make one contribution ourselves. So we’re great cheerleaders, but we are not actual contributors. And sadly, the same thing can be said for many American Churches today.

Unfortunately today, only about 19% of American Christians proactively look for opportunities to share their faith with non-Christians in their life. 78% of Christians have not shared their faith with anyone in the past 6 months.

https://research.lifeway.com/2014/01/02/study-churchgoers-believe-in-sharing-faith-most-never-do/#:~:text=The%20survey%20from%20Nashville%2Dbased,over%20the%20past%206%20months.

The Barna Research group had an article called “Sharing Faith is Increasingly Optional to Christians.” In 1993, 9/10 Christians believed evangelism was the task of the individual. In 2018, only 64% think they need to evangelize; it’s more the role of the church to save people.

https://www.barna.com/research/sharing-faith-increasingly-optional-christians/

This is a problem as just before Jesus left, He left us with the Great Commission in Matthew 28. This isn’t the Optional Commission, the Maybe Commission, When-I-feel-like-it Commission. It is what our Lord commanded us to do, Go and make disciples. Make them of all nations, ethnos, which means all people groups, every ethnicity and every culture. And yet we have less than 20% of Christians in our country doing this.

Faith Bible, we need make sure that this is not true of us. May we be faithful to what do what He has command us to. And as we continue our “Who’s Your One?” series, have that person in mind as look into God’s Word this morning.

We will be in Luke 5 reading about a real account that happened, that I've been praying will challenge both you and me. If we are going to be disciples of Jesus, we need to obey His commands. Let’s see what we can learn from God’s Word that will help us lay aside the reasons we do not evangelize and get out there and share Jesus.

Pray - Lord, convict us through Your Word today and help us to do what You have asked us to do. Place a burden on us for the lost.

Luke 5:17-26

17 Now it happened on a certain day, as He was teaching, that there were Pharisees and teachers of the law sitting by, who had come out of every town of Galilee, Judea, and Jerusalem. And the power of the Lord was present to heal them. 18 Then behold, men brought on a bed a man who was paralyzed, whom they sought to bring in and lay before Him. 19 And when they could not find how they might bring him in, because of the crowd, they went up on the housetop and let him down with his bed through the tiling into the midst before Jesus.

20 When He saw their faith, He said to him, “Man, your sins are forgiven you.”

21 And the scribes and the Pharisees began to reason, saying, “Who is this who speaks blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God alone?”

22 But when Jesus perceived their thoughts, He answered and said to them, “Why are you reasoning in your hearts? 23 Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven you,’ or to say, ‘Rise up and walk’? 24 But that you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins”—He said to the man who was paralyzed, “I say to you, arise, take up your bed, and go to your house.”

25 Immediately he rose up before them, took up what he had been lying on, and departed to his own house, glorifying God. 26 And they were all amazed, and they glorified God and were filled with fear, saying, “We have seen strange things today!”

These men had a mission.

Right away, you can tell these men had a plan in mind. They had a plan. They heard good news. They heard there is a man by the name of Jesus who is able to heal people. “We believe what we’ve heard and we’re going to get this guy to Jesus.” Family, friend, beggar on the street.

Mission drives us, doesn’t it? Having a clear-cut mission helps define us. It gives us direction in life. Maybe you have a family missional statement you’ve created, or maybe a personal one.

We have a church Missional Statement: “Present Christ as Savior, Pursue Christ as Lord, Praise God as King.”

Most companies will have some sort of mission statement, again, because it provides direction. When you go to work, you’re expected to be in line with the mission and goals of the company. Now, if you start to veer off from what your boss wants you to do, what happens? There’s probably going to be a conversation that happens, or there should. They will talk with you and try to reel you back in. They’ll remind you of what the mission and vision of the company or organization is. Maybe they’ll say you’re pursuing goof things, it’s just not the focus of our company. If you want to pursue those things, you might want to start up your own company, because that’s not who we are.

Jesus had a mission statement:

“for the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost” (Lk 19:10).

While He was here, He did other things. He taught, He had conversations with people, spent time with them, He healed people, He built into the lives of His disciples, He worked. He did all of these other things, but His main mission was to “seek and to save that which was lost.”

Jesus never lost focus of that. He never got distracted by all the other things He was doing in life, or the unexpected that comes up. He stayed on mission.

Last week we learned how Jesus called His first disciples, the fishermen Peter and Andrew, James and John. He said to them, “Follow me, and” what? … “I will make you become fishers of men” (Mk 1:17). Some of His first words were instructing His disciples to be missional in witnessing about Him, and then His last words, “But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jersualem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8). He began with this mission and He ended with it.

Jesus was missional. These 4 men were missional. They had somebody that they knew that they wanted to see walk again, so it moved them to get him to Jesus.

QUESTIONS TO PONDER

What drives you?

What things, spiritually, has God put on your heart that you long to see come to fruition in your lifetime?

Do you have kingdom dreams (such as people coming to faith in Christ), or are your dreams all tied up in this life?

Col 3:1-2 If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth.

When was the last time you stopped to think about those dreams?

These four men actually believed that Jesus could heal this man.

These men had an eager expectation.

Look at the end of verse 17, “And the power of the Lord was present to heal them.” Jesus had been healing people of their physical needs. Jesus, being God in the flesh, had the power to heal people, but there were certain times during His earthly ministry that there seemed to be a greater demonstration of His healing power and the reception of it by the people.

Luke is writing an “orderly account” (Lk 1:3) of all that happened with Jesus. With this introduction, it seems to indicate that he composed the letter with the purpose of providing a careful rendering of the events of Jesus’s life in chronological order. In chapter 4, Jesus in Capernaum casts out demons that were in a man (Lk 4:31-37). He heals Peter’s mother-in-law of a high fever (Lk 4:38-39). The end of chapter 4 has people from all over bringing the sick with various diseases and He was healing all of them and casting out more demons. In chapter 5, in an unnamed city, Jesus heals a man who had leprosy, some king of skin disease.

Jesus is currently back in Capernaum teaching and healing. He has been drawing a lot of attention. The religious leaders have come from all over. It says from Galilee, which is the region where Capernaum is, and then the city Jerusalem which is in the region of Judea. Capernaum to Jerusalem is 106 miles, so from Jerusalem and Judea it would have been a 3-5-day journey. News is spreading of what Jesus is doing in Galilee, and these four men believe that if they can get this man to Jesus, he will be healed. Verse 18 tells us this, “Then behold, men brought on a bed a man who was paralyzed, whom they sought to bring in and lay before Him.”

They eagerly expected that Jesus would continue what He was doing and heal this man.

QUESTIONS TO PONDER

Do you have an eager expectation of someone coming to faith?

Does your eager expectation move you to action?

Likewise, we need to have an eager expectation that God will work through us as we share the gospel with others. We have a hope that Jesus is who He says He is and He can do what only He can do. That belief should give us a motivation to share Him with others. And if you have that knowledge in your head but you never put it into action, than you’re not really following Christ. You just consume information. The gospel transforms the heart and mind, and then propels the feet.

These men are on mission to get this man to Jesus. They have eager expectations that he will be healed, but then they encountered an obstacle. As they approach the house where Jesus is, it’s packed with people and there is no room to get to Jesus.

These men encountered an obstacle.

“And when they could not find how they might bring him in, because of the crowd” (Lk 5:19a).

Everyone wants to see Jesus at this point. As they approach the house where Jesus is, it’s packed with people and there is no access. Religious leaders are making long trips to come see and hear Jesus. He is teaching at a house in Capernaum. I believe from what the text reveals that we can figure out that this is actually Simon Peter’s house. He was there previously when He healed his mother-in-law, and why wouldn’t He be back in one of His disciples homes?

So here we see Jesus teaching in a home, and as the four men are bringing the paralytic, there are so many people that they are unable to get inside and see Jesus. Now, let’s stop and learn about a first century Palestinian home for a moment.

Today, we live in many different styled homes. I live in the duplex and if I’m thinking of my home in this story, “How in the world would guys get on the roof and dig through the shingling,” I’ll be confused.

Here is a picture someone drew of Simon Peter’s house in Capernaum, which is on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee. The average home would have allowed for about 50 standing people. So that gives us an idea of maybe how many people were crowded around Jesus. The house is full and there are people standing outside. With these houses, you could get access to the roof by an outside staircase. The single-story houses had roof’s that were sturdy enough to walk on, typically made by laying branches and rushes across and covering with dried mud.

Still, this is an obstacle. This is not what the men were expecting. Earlier, sick people were coming to Jesus from all throughout the region of Galilee, and every single one of them was healed. How disappointing for these men. They were excited. They had that eagerness I had just talked about, to then be met by a crowd of people blocking their way.

We all face obstacles in life, right? We do, it’s part of life. So as these men approached the crowded door, it would have been easy for them to just throw their hands up and say, “Well, we tried.” I could see myself having the same reaction.

Or we could spiritualize it and say, “Well, God must be closing the door. God just didn’t want this to happen.” Yes, it’s true that God does close doors, but we need to be able to discern when that is the case, or when it is an obstacle that is blocking what God has asked us to do.

When we face obstacles in our way to things that God has asked us to do, maybe they’re things we need to work through. Maybe they are things Satan is throwing our way to discourage us. Think of the apostle Paul for a moment, and all he endured as he spread the news about Jesus. He was flogged, beaten, and stoned, opposed relentlessly by the false teachers trying discredit everything he taught, arrested, imprisoned, shipwrecked. Do you think he could have said, “This must not be God’s will because of all of the obstacles.” No, Paul’s mission was to be “a light to the Gentiles” (Acts 13:47; 18:6).

These 4 men encountered an obstacle. They could have given up and said they tried, but they didn’t. They decided to stay persistent and work through it. “They went up on the housetop and let him down with his bed through the tiling into the midst before Jesus” (Lk 5:19b).

“Hey, we can go up the side, dig a hole in the roof, and let the man down in front of Jesus.” And that’s what they did. They put in more effort. They carried the man up the stairs. It was messy. They got dirty as they dug through the roof. It cost them. Someone would have to pay for that roof. It would receive ridicule. Others would say, “You can’t do that,” or the homeowner was definitely going to be upset. Everyone else is going to get upset that this time of teaching is getting disrupted.

QUESTIONS TO PONDER

What obstacles have derailed you from the mission?

Rejection and outcast. You messing up what you had planned to say. Circumstances changing between you and that person. What is it that has caused you to slow down or stop the mission?

What would it look like for you to dig a hole in the roof?

Do whatever it takes. Don’t give up.

So, what happened next. They dug through the roof, lowered the man down in front of Jesus, everyone is watching as this disturbance is taking place and “When He saw their faith, He said to him, ‘Man, your sins are forgiven you’” (Lk 5:20).

These men got more than they bargained for.

Wow! These men wanted this man healed so he could walk again. They were concerned for his external circumstance; that was what was most important to them. But Jesus does something they didn’t expect. Jesus was looking at the internal, what the man needed most, more than physical healing, and so the first thing He said was, “Your sins are forgiven.” He said this first, before telling Him to arise, take up his bed, and go back to his house.

These men were hoping for a physical healing, and it did happen, but unexpectedly, he was also forgiven of his sins. Look at the last verse of our passage. Everyone was amazed and said with Godly fear, “We have seen strange things today” (Lk 5:26).

I’d say so. These men busting through a roof, disrupting this gathering, and then seeing Jesus forgive a man of his sins and healing a paralyzed man. The man walked home. This was worth the trip!

But I want you to catch this: the most important and greatest need that you or I have, has nothing to do with changing the external. It has to do with the internal. That’s why when Jesus say the man being lowered down, He saw the faith of the men, He forgave the man of his sins. That’s the greatest thing Jesus could have done for the man.

Because of sin, we are separated from God and unable to make things right on our own. Our greatest need is not external changes, it is life transformation. Jesus says He alone can give you a new life, eternal life, forgiveness of sins. He will give you a new heart with new desires, changing you from the inside out. Jesus is ultimately who this man needed, and He is ultimately who your “one” needs!

QUESTIONS TO PONDER

How did others play a role in your trusting Jesus?

In what ways has Jesus transformed your life?

Why would you not long for this same type of transformation in others?

Who’s your one? Is it a parent? Is it a friend? Is it a coworker? Is it a neighbor? Is it a child? Jesus told His disciples if they were going to follow Him, He would give them a new task, a new mission, a different direction in life, and this would be one of the defining characteristics of every disciple.

Conclusion

I would like to end with a story. Sometimes we need to hear things from a different angle. So what I would like you to do is listen to this story, take a step back and hear this from a different perspective, which I hope will help you understand better how each of us should be on mission to share Jesus with others.

Now it came to pass that a group existed who called themselves fishermen. And lo, there were many fish in the waters all around. In fact, the whole area was surrounded by streams and lakes filled with fish. And the fish were hungry.

Week after week, month after month, and year after year, those who called themselves fishermen met in meetings and talked about their call to fish, the abundance of fish, and how they might go about fishing. Year after year they carefully defined what fishing means, defended fishing as an occupation, and declared that fishing is always to be a primary task of fishermen.

Continually, they searched for new and better methods of fishing and for new and better definitions of fishing. They created witty slogans and displayed them on big, beautiful banners.

These fishermen build large, beautiful buildings called “Fishing Headquarters.” The plea was that everyone should be a fisherman and every fisherman should fish. One thing they didn’t do, however: They did not fish.

In addition to meeting regularly, they organized a board to send out fishermen to other places where there were many fish. The board hired staff and appointed committees and held many meetings to define fishing, to defend fishing and to decide what new streams should be thought about. But the staff and committee members did not fish.

Large, elaborate, and expensive training centers were built whose original and primary purpose was to teach fishermen how to fish. Over the years, courses were offered on the needs of fish, the nature of fish, where to find fish, the psychological reactions of fish, and how to approach and feed fish.

Those who taught had doctorates in fishology, but the teachers did not fish. They only taught fishing. Year after year, after tedious training, many graduated and were given fishing licenses. They were sent to do full-time fishing, some to distant waters, which were filled with fish. Many who felt the call to be fishermen responded. They were commissioned and sent to fish. But like the fishermen back home, they never fished.

They engaged in all kinds of other occupations. Some felt their job was to relate to the fish in a good way so the fish would know the difference between good and bad fishermen. Others felt that simply letting the fish know they were nice, land-loving neighbors and how loving and kind they were was enough.

Now it’s true that many of the fishermen sacrificed and put up and put up with all kinds of difficulties. Some lived near the water and bore the smell of dead fish every day. They received the ridicule of some who made fun of their fishermen’s clubs and the fact that they claimed to be fishermen yet never fished.

Imagine how hurt some were when one day a person suggested that those who don’t fish were really not fishermen, no matter how much they claimed to be. Yet it did sound correct. Is a person a fisherman if, year after year, he never fishes? More plainly stated: Is one really following if he isn’t fishing?

It’s time to cast out our nets! Go out and fish for people! people who are going to spend forever in hell if they do not believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Remember, it’s not up to us to save people. It’s to faithfully share who Jesus is and what He offers to all people. He does not leave us on our own. The ending of the Great Commission says, “I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matt 28:20b).

Let’s fish for people. Let’s eagerly seek transformation in their lives. Let’s get off the sidelines and stop cheering and start fishing.

Who’s the one you’re going to go after? Who’s your one?

Prayer – Father, I’m so thankful for the way you’ve transformed my life, and many of the people I know. Why would we keep this to ourselves? Why would we keep the greatest news on earth in our own little Christian bubble? You asked your followers to be “fishers of men,” so Lord help us to do that. Help us to be faithful in sharing you with our “One.” Give us the boldness and courage we need to share you with others. Thank You for not leaving us alone during this task. God, we love you and I pray this all in Jesus name, amen.

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“This man could not be brought to Christ by one, he must have four to lend their strength to carry him. Let us apply the principle: Yonder is a husband who is unsaved; his wife has long prayed for him; but her prayers are unanswered. But good wife, God has blessed you with a son who rejoices in God. And have you not two Christian daughters also? O you four, take each a corner of this sick man’s mat and bring your husband, bring your father, to the Savior.” — Spurgeon.