The Only Way | Mark 2:1-17

Check on Bibles

A couple weeks ago we started a series in the book of Mark taking the gospel verse by verse. Last week we finished up chapter 1 where we were introduced to Jesus and His ministry. We’ve talked a ton about the authority of Jesus the past couple weeks because that’s what much of the beginning of this gospel is, displaying Jesus’ authority.

And tonight is no different. In our passage tonight we’re gonna see Jesus making it clear that the only way to God is through Him. Further showing those around Him His authority as the Son of God.

As we’ve been talking about the authority of Jesus, a question I’ve been repeating over and over is, “Do we actually live like Jesus has complete authority in our lives?” It’s an important question to ask ourselves. And I want to do that again tonight, but I want to alter the question a bit. I want us to ask ourselves, “Do we live like Jesus is the only way to God?”

I’ve asked myself this question many times in my life. And to be honest, I’ve often responded “no” to that question. The truth is I often try to get to God by myself. I think to myself, “If I live a good enough life or if I’m good more than I am bad, then maybe that’s good enough.”

That’s what I tried to show others too. Back in high school I can’t tell you how many times I puffed myself up in front of my friends and teachers to make it seem like I was this super righteous dude. In my mind I was the perfect Christian. Better than all of my friends. Even my Christian friends.

We’re gonna meet some guys in our passage tonight that are very similar to me when I was in high school. They’re called the Pharisees. And for the entirety of chapter 2 all the way through verse 6 of chapter 3 we’re gonna see Jesus interact with these Pharisees. There are five stories here where Jesus does something contrary to what the Pharisees believe, the Pharisees try to come at Jesus, and Jesus responds. Tonight we’re gonna cover two of those stories and next week we’re gonna cover the last three.

So let’s dive in to our first story.

Mark 2:1–12 (NLT)

1 When Jesus returned to Capernaum several days later, the news spread quickly that he was back home. 2 Soon the house where he was staying was so packed with visitors that there was no more room, even outside the door. While he was preaching God’s word to them, 3 four men arrived carrying a paralyzed man on a mat. 4 They couldn’t bring him to Jesus because of the crowd, so they dug a hole through the roof above his head. Then they lowered the man on his mat, right down in front of Jesus. 5 Seeing their faith, Jesus said to the paralyzed man, “My child, your sins are forgiven.”

6 But some of the teachers of religious law (the Pharisees) who were sitting there thought to themselves, 7 “What is he saying? This is blasphemy! Only God can forgive sins!”

8 Jesus knew immediately what they were thinking, so he asked them, “Why do you question this in your hearts? 9 Is it easier to say to the paralyzed man ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or ‘Stand up, pick up your mat, and walk’? 10 So I will prove to you that the Son of Man has the authority on earth to forgive sins.” Then Jesus turned to the paralyzed man and said, 11 “Stand up, pick up your mat, and go home!”

12 And the man jumped up, grabbed his mat, and walked out through the stunned onlookers. They were all amazed and praised God, exclaiming, “We’ve never seen anything like this before!”

This story brings us to our first point…

1. Only Jesus can give forgiveness (Mark 2:1-12).

So Jesus and the disciples are back in Capernaum. And as we talked about last week, Capernaum would almost act as a home base for Jesus’ ministry. Last week we saw Jesus healing people and casting out demons in Capernaum, then He and the disciples left for a bit to preach the gospel to the surrounding regions, and now we’re back in Capernaum. And news is spreading quickly that Jesus is back.

Jesus begins preaching to the crowd in Capernaum and there’s something strange going on. There’s a man who can’t walk being carried through the crowds. They climb onto the roof of the house Jesus was preaching out of and they start removing the tiles from the roof. Then they let this man down from the roof right in front of Jesus.

And what happens next is really interesting. This man clearly was here for his legs to be healed so he could walk again. But Jesus doesn’t heal him. He said, “My child, your sins are forgiven.” Jesus saw the faith this man had that Jesus could heal him so Jesus forgave him of his sins. This is a big deal. It is well known in Jewish tradition from the Torah (or the first five books of the Bible) that only God can forgive sins. So Jesus was basically declaring Himself as God in this moment.

Now remember our friends the Pharisees? This is where they come into the picture. The Pharisees were in the crowd as well and they saw all of this take place. Now before we go any further, I just want us to take a minute, let’s meet the Pharisees. Let’s figure out what these guys are about.

So the Pharisees were the religious leaders back in Jesus’ day. They studied the Torah and what all the prophets wrote down and they taught it to the Jewish people. Seems like they’re the good guys right?

They weren’t. The Pharisees saw themselves as the elite of the Jews. They thought of the Law as a set of rules to follow, and if you followed them well then you could earn your way to God. And in their minds they had earned their way to God. But the truth is they hadn’t earned their way to God because it’s impossible for anyone to earn their way to God.

Isaiah 53:6 (NLT)

6 All of us, like sheep, have strayed away.

We have left God’s paths to follow our own…

One of the scrolls of the prophets that these Pharisees would’ve had read through and studied and known well in Isaiah says that everyone has strayed away from God. Paul quotes this passage in Romans 3 to show us that everyone is a sinner. Yet the Pharisees believed they could earn their way to God. These guys not only believed that being perfect was possible, they thought they were perfect.

So we have these guys that, in their pride, think they have earned their way to God. And they see Jesus forgive this lame man’s sins. No wonder they didn’t believe He was the Messiah. They didn’t want to! They didn’t want to acknowledge the fact that what they worked so hard for, what they strived to attain in being perfect wasn’t even necessary cause sins can just be forgiven. When the truth is the only way to God is for sins to be forgiven. But like I said, these guys, in their pride, thought they had made it.

And before they can even say anything, Jesus knew what they were thinking and looks at them and says, “Why are you questioning this? Why won’t you believe? I’ll tell you what, you may not believe I just forgave this man’s sins, but you’ll know who I am if I heal this man.” Then He tells the lame man to get up and walk. The man gets up, walks away, and everyone is amazed.

Jesus claimed to be God, then backed up His claim. So the Pharisees have no excuse in rejecting Him.

There’s only one way to God and that’s through the forgiveness of our sins. We can’t not sin! It’s in our nature! We need Jesus if we want to go to Heaven and enjoy the presence of God for all eternity.

But there’s a flip side to this. Yes we need to acknowledge that Jesus is the Son of God and that He is our Lord, but we also need to acknowledge our own sin. Which brings us to our next point…

2. Only sinners need forgiveness (Mark 2:13-17).

Mark 2:13–17 NLT

13 Then Jesus went out to the lakeshore again and taught the crowds that were coming to him. 14 As he walked along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at his tax collector’s booth. “Follow me and be my disciple,” Jesus said to him. So Levi got up and followed him. 15 Later, Levi invited Jesus and his disciples to his home as dinner guests, along with many tax collectors and other disreputable sinners. (There were many people of this kind among Jesus’ followers.) 16 But when the teachers of religious law who were Pharisees saw him eating with tax collectors and other sinners, they asked his disciples, “Why does he eat with such scum?” 17 When Jesus heard this, he told them, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor—sick people do. I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners.”

So we’ve left the house we were at where Jesus forgave the man of his sins and healed him. Now we’re at the lakeshore. Jesus is walking and teaching and He passes by a tax collector’s booth. It was the booth of a guy named Levi. We find out elsewhere that this is would be the apostle Matthew who wrote the gospel of Matthew. And Jesus tells him, “Follow me. Be my disciple.” And he immediately got up and followed Jesus.

Now this is another really cool story in the context of the culture of the Jews at the time. You see Jewish tax collectors were hated by the Jews back in Jesus’ day. In the 400 years between the old and new testament, Rome conquered Jerusalem and ruled over the Jews. So needless to say, the Jews didn’t like Rome very much. In fact they thought the Messiah was going to overthrow Rome. Now we know that Jesus didn’t come to rule an earthly kingdom, He came to rule a heavenly kingdom, but that’s aside the point.

Matthew, or Levi, was a Jew who collected taxes for Rome. So not only did he work for the government that the Jews hated, he actually collected money from the Jews and gave it to Rome. So Matthew was despised by the Jews. Because he turned his back on his people. Yet Jesus called him to be His disciple.

This is a very different from how the Pharisees ran things. The Pharisees would choose the best and brightest Jews to be teachers of the Law. Jesus chose a man who turned his back on Israel.

And Jesus doesn’t stop there. Matthew was so overjoyed to now be a follower of the Messiah that he hosted a dinner at his house with Jesus and the disciples and other tax collectors. There were even other Jews who were considered terrible sinners at this dinner. And Jesus dined with them. There’s even a note in verse 15 that there were many people like this in Jesus’ ministry.

Most Jews at this time didn’t associate themselves with tax collectors and terrible sinners. Yet Jesus chose them as His company at dinner. And the Pharisees didn’t like it. They asked Jesus’ disciples, “Why is this famous Jewish teacher eating with such scum.” But Jesus overheard them saying this and responded saying, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor—sick people do. I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners.”

Notice the wording there. “I haven’t come to call those who THINK they are righteous, but those who KNOW they are sinners.” That’s the core of Jesus’ ministry. He knows that no one is righteous. Anyone who thinks they are is fooling themselves. Jesus has come to call the ones who know they’re sinners.

Y’all we can only accept Jesus as our Savior if we accept that we need a Savior. Someone to save us from our sins. You and I need to humble ourselves. We need to realize how dark our hearts are. And we need to realize where our sin will lead us. And we need to fall down at the foot of the cross and say, “Jesus I’m a sinner! I can’t do this without you! Please forgive me for my sin against you! I’ll follow you. Whatever you say, I’m with You.”

When we realize that it doesn’t depend on us, that us being in right relationship with God doesn’t depend on our works, then it changes our lives. The weight is lifted off our shoulders and our lives are marked with this joy where we go to others boldly and say, “I was a sinner and now I’m forgiven! I was lost and now I’m found! And you can be too!”

I know quite a bit of y’all in this room play sports. So let me use a sports analogy. You can’t get better at the sport you’re playing until you acknowledge that you need to get better. You have to realize the state that you’re in now and how that falls short of where you wanna be. Now the main difference in the analogy is you can always train to get better at a sport, but only Jesus can make you more like Him. And He does that through the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit draws you into a closer relationship with God by giving you the desire to come to Jesus in prayer daily. To gather with other Christians on Wednesday nights and Sunday mornings because they have the Holy Spirit living in them too. And to open up that Bible you have on more days than just Wednesday and Sunday.

And if we’re truly called to imitate Jesus, you are by the way, that also means we are to hang out with people who don’t know Jesus. And that shouldn’t just be what we SHOULD do, it should be our desire to. Not to do what they do, but to show them who Jesus is. And I can go ahead and tell you if hanging out with sinners is causing you to do what they do then you need to check your heart and reevaluate why you’re spending time with them. Cause your behavior changes when you remember why you’re hanging out with sinners like Jesus did.

So I want to ask you again. Do you live like Jesus is the only way to God? Are you living your life to prove that you’re good enough or are you willing to acknowledge that you’re not and trust in the Man who is. And are you living your life pointing others to Him? When other people look at you, do they think, “Wow they’re a loving person?” or do they not even know you’re a Christian.

Think about this, cause we’re gonna answer these questions in small groups. Let’s pray.