Who Can Forgive Sins? - Luke 5:17-24

Introduction - set the scene - vs 17

Opening Illustration - Confession to the unholy priesthood

We live in a predominately Roman Catholic background here in Albuquerque. And so, even though many of us didn’t grow up in a catholic church, we should all be familiar with the Sacrament of Confession.

But, if you are unfamiliar, this act of confession involves you, a musky, dark, wooden box of a room with two seats facing each other and an opaque screen in between.

According to Roman Catholic doctrine, when you sin, to have your sin absolved or forgiven, you must go into the church, go into one of these wooden confessional rooms, and meet with a priest.

The priest blesses you, you make the sign of the cross over your heart, and then you say, “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.”

You then confess your sins, and the priest provides you with a list of things to do, with penance or acts to show repentance for your sins, and then the priest absolves you of your sins - pronouncing you forgiven.

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Now, a question for everyone here: if you go to confession in a catholic church, according to Catholic doctrine, who are you praying to when you say, “Father, forgive me for I have sinned”?

Are you praying to God? Actually, that request is for the priest. You’re praying to the priest. The priest also pronounces you forgiven by saying, “I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.” He receives the prayer. He receives the confession. He does the absolution/

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But that all changed during covid. Pope Francis made this radical allowance for those who could not or did not want to go and make a physical confession at the church. Listen to what he says, “If you cannot find a priest to confess to… speak directly with God, your Father, and tell Him the truth. Say, ‘Lord, I did this, this, this. Forgive me,’ and ask for pardon with all your heart. You can draw near to God’s forgiveness without having a priest at hand. ”

What a novel idea! Speak to God, ask Him for forgiveness. It only took a worldwide virus to reform this Catholic doctrine!

But sadly, there is a caveat the Pope added that removed any hope of such a reformation. Pope Francis went on to say that you must make a promise to God along with your confession, saying to Him, “‘I will go to Confession afterward, but forgive me now.’

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How foolish is this? Does God need a priest to help Him forgive your sins? Surely not. They are mere men. Like the priests in the Old Testament they have just as much power to forgive sin as you and I do because they are just as weak and guilty of sin as you and I are. And, they are not God.

‌Main Point

So then, Who can forgive sins? That’s my title for today’s sermon. Who can forgive sins?

And the only real answer that you can find in the Bible is this: Only God can.

And the point that Jesus makes in our text is that He is God, for He has the authority to forgive sins.

Jesus is God, for He has the power to forgive sins.

‌Setting the Scene - vs 17

Our text is seperated into four scenes. But before we get to scene one, I want us to see how Luke sets the stage in verse 17. Read along with me,

Luke 5:17 LSB

And it happened that one day He was teaching; and there were some Pharisees and teachers of the law sitting there, who had come from every village of Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem, and the power of the Lord was present for Him to perform healing.

Luke doesn’t specify but it is likely that Pharisees from all over Israel had gathered that day because of the spread of another astonishing report about Jesus of Nazareth. The report would have come from the priests in Galilee. A man was cleansed of his leprosy, and according to this once leprous man, he was healed by a man named Jesus. The report said that Jesus told the man, “Be clean,” and the leprosy was instantly gone. This Nazarene healed a leper.

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Moses had to plead for God to heal Myriam. Occasionally, a leper outside the city would present themselves as clean before the priests, but their healing was performed by the sovereign hand of God. When the man Namaan was healed by the instruction of Elisha the prophet, he correctly attributed His healing to God, saying, “I know that there is no God in all the earth but in Israel.” In cleansing this leper, Jesus did what only God could have done.

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Reports had spoken of how this Nazarene was healing many, that he was speaking to demons and exorcising them out of the afflicted. Even the priests jettisoned off to backwater Nazareth filed a report that Jesus had claimed to be the fulfillment of the messianic prophecy of Isaiah 58 and 61.

But this was new. He made an unclean man clean. Truly, this warranted an investigation.

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And the Pharisees were not there to investigate out of genuine curiosity. This Jesus posed a threat to their power, to their authority, and to their influence.

The Pharisees, whose name in Aramaic means “separate ones,” were a pious sect of religious leaders in Israel who opposed the Greek secularization of Jewish culture. They wanted to conserve the traditions and ways of Judaism, and they were theologically conservative and believed in the resurrection, angels, demons, and human responsibility for sin. They looked for the coming Messiah and were devoted to teaching and following the Law. This intense focus ended up being the Pharisee’s fatal flaw. They were so centered on strict external adherence to the Law and the rituals and traditions that they abandoned faithful obedience and worship from the heart in favor of outward appearance and righteous behavior.

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And so Jesus comes in with His radical way of teaching with authority, and with signs and wonders, and he comes to the commoners, the people who made up the most significant following of the Pharisees. And then he starts healing lepers.

Here’s Jesus in the middle of Capernaum, as the Gospel of Mark tells us. And He’s teaching the crowd surrounding the house, perhaps from a window, while all these Pharisees, in their fine robes, from all over Judea and even from Jerusalem, are sitting in the front row, the theological elite there to test His teaching.

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Luke hints at what is about to happen with that last phrase, “The Power of the Lord was with Him to heal.” He was there to do what He was sent to do: preach the gospel of the kingdom. And He was empowered by His Father to authenticate His message and His authority with a wonderous sign. Something astonishing is about to shake all in those sitting before Jesus.

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Luke then shifts the camera angle from its focus from Jesus teaching the crowd to a group of men, five in total according to Mark, approaching the throng, one of them being carried on a stretcher

Transition‌

I will call this first scene today, which spans from verse 18 to verse 20, The Approach of the Faithful Friends.

Read with me starting in verse 18,

1. The Approach of the Faithful Friends - vs 18-20

Luke 5:18–19 LSB

And behold, some men were carrying on a stretcher a man who was paralyzed; and they were trying to bring him in and to set him down before Him. But not finding any way to bring him in because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and let him down through the tiles with his stretcher, into the middle of the crowd, in front of Jesus.

The Sovereign Test of Faith

Think with me for a moment of Christ's sovereign choice to begin teaching in a home in a densely populated neighborhood. He knew these four faithful friends would bring this paralyzed man to Him for healing. He knew that He was empowered to heal them. He knew there was a more significant lesson He was about to demonstrate to the crowd and the Pharisees, and He chose an almost impossible place for these faithful friends to reach Him.

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Why does He do this? To test their faith and refine their belief with obstacles and obstruction. To try them and see if they would persevere.

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They were trying to bring their friend in. They were trying to set him down in front of Jesus because they believed He had the power to redeem what was irreversible, to heal their friend's paralysis.

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But Luke writes that they did not find any way to bring him in.

Disneyland Illustration

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The illustration that came to mind was navigating the crowd at Disneyland…. in the middle of the fireworks show…while driving your baby in a stroller back to the hotel. The throng of people is thick. People are sitting in the middle of walkways. No one is moving. No one is paying attention to you or aware of your objective to get your screaming baby home because the fireworks are too loud, they've had too much sugar throughout the day, and it's two hours past their bedtime.

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And this situation is so much more dire than getting home from Disneyland. And the friends carrying the stretcher were far more determined to reach their destination.

Architectural Background‌

‌Now, for your mind to picture this situation, you must think about Palestinian architecture. Thankfully, we live in the land of flat roofs, so it's not a stretch for our imagination. In ancient Palestine, homes would typically be one story with a flat roof.

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That roof would consist of horizontal beams going across, and then in between those beams, there would be this patchwork of reeds, thorns, and sticks caked together with mud or clay. That mud or clay would become hardened by the sun and thick like ceramic tile so that you could use that roof space to host a guest, for storage, or to dry some food. Typically, there would be a ladder or a stairway leading up to this rooftop, precisely what these friends found.

T‌he Scheme

They circled the audience, fixed on hearing the Word of God preaching. They found the house Jesus was preaching from and climbed the stairs, carrying their friend on his stretcher. Luke then writes that they let him down through the tiles, which implies that they first had to dig up the ceramic-like clay/thatch roofing to make a whole big enough for a stretcher.

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Imagine you're in whoever's home it was, looking at Jesus standing at the door teaching the crowd. You are enraptured with his message until you feel some dirt raining down on your head. You look at your dirty hand that you used to wipe your hair and then look up. After quickly dodging out of the more giant clumps of clay falling into the house, you are shocked to see the sunlight coming through the ceiling. A small commotion fills the crowd as Jesus stops His sermon to turn around and look himself up into four sets of eyes, looking pleadingly down at him. Somehow, they also rigged up a pulley and lowered this man on a stretcher before Jesus' feet.

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Was this paralytic born this way? Did a tragic event cause his condition? Was it the result of guilt and sin? Luke does not tell us. All we know is that he was brought to the feet of Jesus by four loving friends who believed He had the power to heal their beloved brother.

T‌hey Loved Their Friend

Their actions revealed these two things. Firstly, they loved their friend. There are other paralytics healed in the Bible.

John 5 records a man who lay by the mystical pool of Bethesda for 38 years with no one to help him into the mythical waters.

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Acts 3 tells of a man confined to the Beautiful Gate at Jerusalem, left there to beg for alms.

But this person with paralysis had friends who loved him.

They Believed in Jesus

And by their loving actions, they also showed that they believed in Jesus. They had faith in Jesus. The crowd could not stop them, the possible anger of the homeowner whose roof they ripped up did not prevent them, and a possible rebuke from the disciples or even Jesus would not stop them.

Their friend only needed to meet Jesus, and they stopped at nothing to bring Him to Jesus.

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Tender and Targeted Words

He saw their faith in Him and then He spoke.

He spoke with tender words to the man, calling him “Friend.”

You can hear the compassion in this address that this man undoubtedly saw in the face of Jesus as he looked up at the Christ.

He spoke with tender words, and then he spoke with targeted words, telling him, “Your sins are forgiven.”

Seeing their Faith

And this is what happens when the mat hits finally rests on the floor, verse 20,

Luke 5:20 LSB

And seeing their faith, He said, “Friend, your sins are forgiven you.”

Jesus did not rebuke them for rudely interrupting His sermon.

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Instead, He saw their faith. He saw the faith of the friends who let the man down through the roof and the faith of the paralytic who let himself be lowered in front of the Great Physician.

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Notice that their faith was made evident by their actions.

The mere profession of faith does not assume the possession of faith. It bears forth fruit that is evident and seen.

Let me put it differently, their loving act of lowering their friend down before Jesus was not what led to forgiveness. Their faith inspired and fueled their actions. And this is what Jesus saw.

Addressing the Biggest Problem

His friends brought the man for healing, not Forgiveness. When you come to Jesus, sometimes He gives you what you want, but He always gives you what you need.

He is not preoccupied with your felt needs. He addresses your biggest problem.

And your biggest problem is not your physical circumstance, your financial situation, or your relationship status.

Your biggest problem, my biggest problem, and that paralytic’s biggest problem is our sin.

The problem is that God is holy, and we are not.

And we will all have to stand before the Holy God and answer for the life He gave us.

And this is what Scripture tells about how we will stand on judgment day if we stand on our own merits, Romans 3:10-12 “As it is written, “THERE IS NONE RIGHTEOUS, NOT EVEN ONE; THERE IS NONE WHO UNDERSTANDS, THERE IS NONE WHO SEEKS FOR GOD; ALL HAVE TURNED ASIDE, TOGETHER THEY HAVE BECOME WORTHLESS; THERE IS NONE WHO DOES GOOD, THERE IS NOT EVEN ONE.”

No one is righteous enough. There is nothing we can do to bring ourselves up to God’s holy standard of perfection. And that’s the bad news of the gospel.

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The good news for that paralytic and the good news for you and me today is that God reached down to us through His Son, whom He sent to be perfectly obedient and righteous in our place. And then to die on the cross paying the penalty for our sins. And so forgiveness can be found in Christ thus providing Forgiveness for all who believe in Christ.

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‌As Warren Wiersbe wrote: “Forgiveness is the greatest miracle Jesus ever performs. It meets the greatest need; it costs the greatest price; and it brings the greatest blessings and the most lasting results.”

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Application Questions

‌Now, I have two application questions for you now; the first is obvious.

1. Have you come to Jesus for the Forgiveness of your sins?

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Have you believed in this gospel?

Have you recognized your sinfulness and guilt in light of God’s holiness?

Have you turned away from your sin?

Have you stopped trying to earn your way to heaven?

And instead, have you trusted in the finished work of Christ?

Believe in Him. Come to Him in Faith, and He will forgive you of your sins.

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2. Secondly, dear saints, do you have a friend who needs to see Jesus?‌

Do you believe that Jesus can heal the sickness of their sin-riddled soul? Do you and I love these dear friends like the four in these verses? Grab your end of the stretcher. Tear up the roof. And strive in faith to bring them before His feet.

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After witnessing the Approach of the Faithful Friends, the camera angle shifts from Jesus and the paralytic to the scrunched-up, shocked, and disgusted faces of the scribes and Pharisees. We will call this scene the Anger of the Unfaithful Pharisees. Look down with me at verse 21.

2. The Anger of the Unfaithful Pharisees - vs 21

Luke 5:21 LSB

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

The Scribes

I had already provided background on who the Pharisees were, but Luke also mentioned the scribes. They were legal counselors and lawyers who explained the application of the Law.

And so when they and the Pharisees heard what Jesus said to the paralytic, their already trigger-happy minds jumped to the sin of blasphemy.

They were shocked, dismayed, and appalled that Jesus told the man his sins were forgiven. And that was because they held to the true doctrine that only God can forgive sins.

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Against God Alone

In the famous Psalm 51, David wrote that in committing adultery with Bathsheba and orchestrating the murder of Uriah, her husband, Psalm 51:4 “Against You, You only, I have sinned And done what is evil in Your sight…”

David sinned against so many, and yet, he is right. Ultimately, all sin is sin against God.

Therefore, God alone possesses the authority to absolve one of their sins. And He has promised that forgiveness is found in Him, Isaiah 43:25, “I, even I, am the one who wipes out your transgressions for My own sake, And I will not remember your sins.”

The whole Sacrificial system was established to bring the Israelites to the conclusion that their sins must be dealt with and that a sacrifice must be made to remove the penalty of sin.

But it is not the Leviticus priest who made one clean. It was not the priest that one sacrificed to.

For it was God who alone forgives sins. So then, were the scribes and Pharisees wrong in their thought? Who can forgive sins? Only God.

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Blasphemer?

And so when this Jesus they had come to scrutinize proclaimed the forgiveness of the paralytic’s sin, they rightly understood who He claimed to be. God.

But instead of believing that He is the Messiah, the Son of God, who demonstrated authority over disease and over demons, who cleansed the unclean leper with the power of His words — Instead of believing, they condemned Him.

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They believed that He spoke blasphemies, impious and irreverent speech that brings God down to your level or yourself up to His.

He made Himself equal to God and was, therefore, guilty. And the punishment according to the Law they were so well versed in was death, Leviticus 24:16, “‘The one who blasphemes the name of Yahweh shall surely be put to death.”

In the end, this is the sin for which the Sanhedrin arrested Jesus and handed him over to Pilate to be executed.

In their unbelieving hearts, this Jesus of Nazareth was either a lunatic or a blaspheming liar. But it never once crossed their minds that He could be Lord.

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Dear friends, you must decide in your mind and heart who Jesus is. You can not merely think He was a good teacher, or a pious man, or just a powerful healer.

Everyone in the crowd may not have caught it, but the Scribes and Pharisees came to the logical conclusion of Jesus’ words. He claimed to be the Lord God.

If you are here and have not believed that Jesus is Lord. That He is God, you can not wait to come to a conclusion. If you think you can just wait and find out in the end, it will be too late.

Jesus leaves no room on the fence for you to sit on. He is either a blasphemer or the Blessed God of the Universe.

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As C.S. Lewis famously said, “A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic–on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg–or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse…. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon, or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God.”

W‌ill you recognize Him for who He truly is? Will you believe that He is the Lord God and follow after Him?

Transition

Or do you need to hear and see more? Well, look no further than the next movement in the text.

In verse 20, Jesus did what only God could do, forgive sins, and in verses 22-25, Jesus shows us He has the divine right to do so.

We will call this scene the Authority of the Son of Man. Look down at verse 22

3. The Authority of the Son of Man- vs 22-25

Luke 5:22 LSB

But Jesus, knowing their reasonings, answered and said to them, “Why are you reasoning in your hearts?

Divine Omniscience

First, I want you to see that Jesus possesses divine omniscience, which means that He knows all things. Even the secret things of the heart.

Puritan Matthew Henry said, "God not only sees men, he sees through them."

And Jesus here saw right through the Scribes and Pharisees.

They did not yet have the boldness to condemn Christ with their words in front of this crowd. They only thought those thoughts. But the thoughts of their hearts were not hidden from Jesus.

He possesses the omniscience of God, knowing evening known, unknown, and knowable.

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He knows their thoughts. The word Luke uses here —dialogismous — is a word Luke always uses when describing evil thoughts.

Is this not a fearful reality? Think of every secret sinful thought you have every day, even this morning: angry thoughts, lustful thoughts, discontent thoughts, prideful thoughts. Jesus sees them all.

As the author of Hebrews writes, Hebrews 4:13 "And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are uncovered and laid bare to the eyes of Him to whom we have an account to give."

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Do you remember Jonah? God called him to preach the message of salvation to sinful Nineveh. And he didn't want to go because he didn't want the Ninevites to be saved. He hated them. And so he thought he could hide from God in the belly of a boat sailing in the opposite direction.

But he couldn't hide from God, who sent a storm to rock that boat. Jonah was sent overboard and swallowed into the belly of a fish.

And guess what Jonah did there? He prayed to God for salvation. Jonah realized if he couldn't hide from God in the belly of the boat, God could see him, and hear him, and save him from the belly of the fish.

And that is what God did: He saved Jonah. Because God knew where Jonah was, God knew the repentance of his heart. God knew the prayers he uttered with his mouth.

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Dear friends, don't be like the foolish Jonah in the story's beginning, thinking you can hide your sin from Jesus. He sees it all. He knows it all.

Instead, come to Him in faith and repentance as Jonah did in the belly of the fish, as the leper did in the text last week, and say to Him, Lord, if you are willing, make me clean. And He will tell you, I am willing.

Divine Wisdom

In verse 22 Jesus demonstrated His divine omniscience, and in verse 23 we see His divine wisdom.

Luke 5:23 LSB

“Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins have been forgiven you,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’?

They questioned, "Who is this who blasphemes?" Jesus answers their unspoken question with a question of His own, "Which is easier to say..?"

The logical answer would be that it is easier to say your sins have been forgiven, as I pointed out in my introduction. The catholic priests make this pronouncement every day in the confessional.

It is much harder to tell a paralytic to get up and walk. It either shows that you are insensitive or insane or... that your words have power over creation.

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They thought that they had caught Jesus. But Jesus trapped them. Either answer would have affirmed the power of Jesus before the people. No mere man can heal broken bodies with His words. Only God can heal.

As one pastor put it, "Doctors only practice medicine. Only God can perform miracles." Only God could heal this paralytic with the power of His words.

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In another of David's more famous psalms, he praises God for Psalm 103:3 He alone is the one "Who pardons all your iniquities, Who heals all your diseases;"

Jesus is doubling down here. He is setting up His point, which He makes very clear in the next verse.

Read with me verse 24.

Divine Messianic Authority

Luke 5:24 ESV

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.”

We saw Jesus' divine omniscience, we saw His divine wisdom, and here we see His divine Messianic authority.

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This title, Son of Man, does not reference His human nature. Throughout the New Testament, several titles are used for Jesus — teacher, Lord, Christ, Son of God, Lion of Judah, Son of David, Teacher, Master, Son of Man. The title used more than any other title is Christ or Messiah. And the second most frequent title is the one Jesus uses here, Son of Man. This title is used 83 times in the New Testament, and this is what is interesting: 80 of those 83 times that title is used, it is used by Jesus Himself. Son of Man is Jesus' favorite and preferred self-designated title.

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And that is because it refers to the prophecy of Daniel 7:13-14 "Behold, with the clouds of heaven One like a Son of Man was coming, And He came up to the Ancient of Days And came near before Him. "And to Him was given dominion, Glory, and a kingdom, That all the peoples, nations, and men of every tongue Might serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion Which will not be taken away; And His kingdom is one Which will not be destroyed."

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Every Jew who was learned in the scriptures and who had spent their entire life hoping for the Messiah would have understood who Jesus claimed to be when He called Himself, for the first time in Luke, the Son of Man. In using this title, He is declaring to the Pharisees, to the people, and to the paralytic lying before Him that He has all the authority, that He has all the dominion forever, that He is the eternal King of all the universe, the Divine Messiah, sent from the Ancient of Days to forgive that man of his sins. As Jesus said later in Luke, Luke 19:10: "For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save the lost."

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The Center of the Chiasm

Now, we must stop and zoom out at this point in the text. When you look at the structure of the 5th chapter of Luke, this verse, this statement by Jesus, and this declaration of His divine Messianic Authority over sin is the centerpiece of Luke's message.

At the beginning of Luke 5, what does Peter say after Jesus demonstrates His divine power to Peter by overloading his nets with fish? 

Luke 5:8: "Go away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man!" And Jesus does not go away. He doesn't turn His back but instead calls Peter to follow after Him.

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Then, when Jesus encounters a man, made unclean by leprosy, a man marked by the uncleanness of sin asks if Jesus is willing to make Him clean. Jesus says I am willing, I desire it, and then He touches the man. And when Jesus, the Pure One, touches the impure, Jesus doesn't become unclean. He cleanses.

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And in the last section of this chapter, which Pastor Dave will cover next week, Jesus calls one of the most despised and sinful types of people in Jewish society Levi the tax collector.

And this makes the Pharisees predictably upset again. Instead of letting Jesus read their thoughts, they came up with a passive-aggressive complaint to the disciples: Luke 5:30-32 "And the Pharisees and their scribes began grumbling at His disciples, saying, "Why do you eat and drink with the tax collectors and sinners?"'

And listen to what Jesus says, "And Jesus answered and said to them, "It is not those who are well who need a physician, but those who are sick. "I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance."

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He has come to call sinners like Levi and Peter to repentance and follow after Him. And when they repent and come to Him, He cleanses them and forgives them, transforming them from rebellious sinners into His disciples.

You see, it doesn't matter if you are a sinful fisherman, a traitorous tax collector, a ceremonially unclean leper, or a guilty man needing friends to carry you to Jesus because of your physical disability. Jesus has true power to transform each of them, and the true power to transform us us because He has Divine authority to cleanse us and forgive us of our sins.

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And to prove He has this divine authority, to prove that He is the messianic Son of Man, He turns and speaks to the paralytic, "I say to you, rise, pick up your bed, and go home."

Divine Compassion

But we see something more here about Christ. As Jesus addresses the paralytic, we see another aspect of Christ's character. We see His divine compassion and mercy.

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Twice in this passage, He speaks to the paralyzed man in the most gracious and kind way. First, in verse 20, He calls the man His friend and assures him that his soul is healed.

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And here He tells him that his body is cured, too.

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He did not leave him in his suffering but addressed every one of His needs. He saved the man, body, and soul, as He will do for all who believe in Him at the resurrection!

It is more than enough that God graces us with forgiveness. It is a glorious thing to be saved from our sins. But He abounds in mercy and lovingkindness, for in saving us, He saves us to Him. He makes us clean, and He makes us His children.

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I love the words of JC Ryle here,

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Expository Thoughts on Luke, Vol. 1 (Luke 5:17–26)

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"Let us never forget this part of our Lord's character. Christ's loving kindness to His people never changes and never fails. It is a deep well of which no one ever found the bottom.

It began from all eternity before they were born. It chose, called, and quickened them when they were dead in trespasses and sins. It drew them to God and changed their character, and put a new will in their minds and a new song in their mouths. It has borne with them in all their waywardness and shortcomings. It will never allow them to be separated from God. It will flow ever forward, like a mighty river, through the endless ages of eternity.

Christ's love and mercy must be a sinner's plea when he first begins his journey. Christ's love and mercy will be his only plea when he crosses the dark river and enters home (Repeat)

Let us seek to know this love by inward experience and prize it more. Let it constrain us more continually to live, not to ourselves, but to Him who died for us and rose again."

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One day, that man's new legs would once again whither. But even then, he would remain perpetually new because Jesus caused a spring of everlasting life to flow forth in his very soul that day.

Divine Power

Lastly, in verse 25 we see the confirmation of Jesus’ Divine Power.

Luke 5:25 LSB

And immediately he rose up before them, and picked up what he had been lying on, and went home glorifying God.

As He did in chapter 4, in the text I last preached to you, with the fever of Peter’s mother-in-law, Jesus heals the paralyzed man with His words. God alone has the power to command creation with His voice as He did in the beginning. We studied this very thing if you came to Sunday School this morning.

Gen 1:3: “Then God said, “Let there be light”’ and what happened? “there was light.”

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When Jesus told the man to rise, He rose, picked up his bed, and carried the thing that had been carrying him. And all the crowd saw the paralytic drop in through the roof and walk out through the door.

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Jesus displayed the omniscience of God because He is God.

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Jesus demonstrated the Wisdom of God because He is God.

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Jesus declared to have the authority of God because He is God.

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Jesus exhibited the compassion of God because He is God.

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Jesus exuded the power of God because He is God.

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He healed that man because He is God.

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And that healing proved to that paralytic, to the crowd that day, and to you and me, that Jesus has the authority to forgive our sins. Why? Because He is God.

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What a glorious truth! Amen?

4. The Astonishment of the Witnesses - vs 26

This brings us to our last verse, and our concluding scene, the Astonishment of the Witnesses. Read with me, verse 26,

Luke 5:26 LSB

And astonishment seized them all and they began glorifying God; and they were filled with fear, saying, “We have seen remarkable things today.”

Luke writes that all who saw the paralyzed man walk were seized with amazement and filled with fear. They said that they saw remarkable things - and that word in Greek is — paradoxos. What they witnessed with their eyes did not compute with what their brains knew to be reality. It was a paradox. This Jesus of Nazareth, this teacher who they had all come to here, had just healed a man of his paralysis and forgiven him of his sins. This man spoke and acted as if He were the God of the universe. Because He is God

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And so Luke writes that they were seized by astonishment, filled with fear, and began to glorify God. Indeed, this is the most proper response when we encounter the power of Christ.

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Dear saints, shake off your familiarity with this gospel account. Be filled with reverence as you witness the incredible power of the Divine Son of Man. Be seized with astonishment in your Savior's presence. Worship and glorify Jesus, the Son of God, for there is no other like Him. ‌

Conclusion

In Sunday School, we were talking about types and shadows of Christ in the Old Testament. And there is a shadow in the Old Testament that came to my mind. And I’ll close with this…

In 2 Samuel 9 we have David

Newly established as King

Asks if there are any sons of King Saul still alive - typically new dynasties would want to search out descendants of the previous dynsasty and stamp them out…not what David had in mind

There is one grandson of Saul still around - Mephibosheth the son of David’s best friend Jonathan

Mephibosheth paralyzed at the age of 5 - some sort of brain or spine injury suffered as the household of Saul fled the palace after his death

Mephibosheth is carried before the king, falls down at his feet and asks for the King’s mercy

The King tells him not to fear, proclaims his love for the paralyzed man, promises him a place at his dinner table as one of his own sons, adopting him into his royal family

The great King of Israel, David, could only give the paralyzed man a seat at his table.

The King of Kings

had mercy upon the man

caused the paralyzed man to walk

Forgave him of his sins thus giving Him a seat at His eternal table as one of God’s adopted sons

Think of that moment when the man stood for the very first time. Amazed, glorifying God.

Like the song writer penned,

I stand amazed in the presence

Of Jesus the Nazarene, And wonder how He could love me, A sinner condemned, unclean.

How marvelous! How wonderful! And my song shall ever be: How marvelous! How wonderful! Is my Savior’s love for me!

Have you known the savior’s love for you? Has He forgiven your sins? Surely, He has the power to do so for He is God!

Just as the paralyzed man did that day, for the first time in who knows how long, stand amazed in the presence of Jesus the Nazarene. And wonder How He could love you, a sinner, condemned, uncleaned.

Let’s pray

Benediction

Commenting on the moment the paralyzed man rose up from his mat, 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.”

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Dear saint, have you come to Jesus to be healed? Has He told you those tender words, “friend, your sins are forgiven”?

Spend every moment on the walk to the eternal home Jesus is preparing for you, speaking and shouting and singing and leaping to the glory of God.

As Pastor Dave says, you are sent!