Jesus Heal's a Paralytic

Intro

Last year, my wife and I bought a house. And when you buy a house, you generally spend a lot of time setting up the space the way you want it, kinda like when you move into a different room in your apartment or house, you want to get it the way you like it. For us, while we spent a lot of time inside, we also put a decent amount of work in on the outside as well.

My wife, Abbey, loves flowers so we planted some wildflowers, hyrdangeas, and a tree. One of her favorite flowers though are Peonies, and her granma sent us one to plant once we moved in. The thing about plants is they all need different things to survive - they need different amounts of water, fertilizer, sunlight, even humidity. And with peonies, you only really need to water them every 10-14 days. To start off, I probably was giving it a little too much water. Even though it needed water, I later realized that there was something else going on...

Eventually I noticed that the stems and leaves were getting these white splotches on them. And honestly I just thought it might go away on its own, but it didn’t. So i googled what it might be, and while i was trying to figure it out I was still watering it maybe like once or twice a week. Eventually, I found it was a fungus that grows on them when you water the plant too much. So even though plants, generally speaking need water to live, this particular plant had another, deeper issue going on before I had seen the effects of that problem, meaning the white spots.

There is saying that goes, “where there’s smoke, there’s probably fire.” meaning, the smoke is evidence there is a deeper issue going on at the point of origin. And sometimes our lives are like that peony, we go on doing what we think we are supposed to be doing, but all the while, there is a deeper issue going on under surface that we don’t realize needs addressing until we see its effects.

I think this story we are going to look at tonight, has something to say about the issues we face in our day to day lives. Tunr with me to Mark 2:1-12

Read

2 And when he returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home. 2 And many were gathered together, so that there was no more room, not even at the door. And he was preaching the word to them. 3 And they came, bringing to him a paralytic carried by four men. 4 And when they could not get near him because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him, and when they had made an opening, they let down the bed on which the paralytic lay. 5 And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” 6 Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, 7 “Why does this man speak like that? He is blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” 8 And immediately Jesus, perceiving in his spirit that they thus questioned within themselves, said to them, “Why do you question these things in your hearts? 9 Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise, take up your bed and walk’? 10 But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he said to the paralytic— 11 “I say to you, rise, pick up your bed, and go home.” 12 And he rose and immediately picked up his bed and went out before them all, so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, “We never saw anything like this!”

Pray

Body

Try, with me, to imagine being present for this story. Imagine that we are packed into a small house (try to reference a building on the property, one of our cabins). And maybe your one of the friends, or your the man, or you’re in the crowd, and all of the sudden these people are just busting thru the roof. I mean this is kinda wild. Right?

The most interesting part of this story to me comes when the paralytic man is being lowered through the roof. Like, its obvious that people know about Jesus, they know he is a miracle worker and a great teacher, but I am pretty sure this man and his friends were coming especially for healing. Did you notice in the story that when Jesus sees these men, the first thing he says of the paralytic man is that his sins are forgiven?? Isn’t that kind a weird on the surface? Like imagine, we are out on a hike and it’s a super hot day, and you are DYING for water, and you come to me because you know I have extra water or something but instead of water, I gave you something super salty like sunflower seeds or jerky? You would be kinda hurt right? I’m not saying that this paralytic man would’ve been disappointed to be forgiven, but I gotta think that he was a little like, “soooo can you do anything else for me *cough cough*

Jesus had to know that he was hoping to be healed of paralysis, so why open with forgiving sins? Well, I think it is similar to the problem I had with the peony. Just like the peony generally needed water to survive, there was a deeper issue causing the plants overall health to fail, one that eventually made itself visible even though it was intially unseen - so the paralytic man had a deeper issue than just his paralysis.

The priority that Jesus places on sin here highlights a reality that all of us deal with, which is that mankind has been separated from God. It is the problem that the entire Bible addresses. In the Garden of Eden, at the beginning of creation, Adam represented all of man kind, like athletes represent their countries in the Olympics. Originally, God had created the Garden to be a place where He could dwell in peace with His creation. However, when Adam and Eve were tempted by the Serpent to explicitly disobey God, they gave into their desires to be like God, really to replace God or be independent of Him. Once Adam made that decision, all of creation fell under the effects of sin. Because of sin we have to deal with things like pain, sickness, murder, jealousy, and death. Why? Because the result of sin is decay, that is why in Romans the Bible says the wages of sin is death. Sin and death is unholy, it has no place in God’s presence, and if we are unholy and sinful people, then we have no place with God.

Friends, the hard reality is that without God, our natural decisions lead to destruction and death. I can see this in my own life. I am an only child, so I typically think about how i can get what i want, regardless of how it affects other people. And I will do almost anything to make it seem like I am right, or at the very least to save face in any situation. I am sure, if you all look at your own lives, you can come up with situations where you have made decisions that have hurt either yourselves or other people around you. We can all even look at human history and see how we naturally bend towards disorder and destruction. Sin, by definition, creates pain and disorder.

Recognizing this, Jesus chooses to respond to the faith of the man and his friends by healing the deeper issue at hand. Jesus easily could have just healed the mans body, but what good is it for man to have the whole world, and yet forfeit his soul? What good would it have been for this man to walk around the rest of his life, only to die, and still have his sins counted against him?

That, in part, is why these scribes in the story start fussing, is because they know being forgiven of your sins is BIG DEAL! And the question I have for yall tonight is, do you think sin is a big deal? Do you think you need to be healed of your sins? Because, to be real with you, if you don’t think you have sins, if you don’t think you have a problem that needs healing, then Jesus’ life and work isn’t going to mean that much to you.

And honestly, when I was in middle school and high school, it didn’t mean that much to me. I was talking like everyone else, getting into the same things that the world was telling me would make me successful and cool, I believed in God, but his existence didn’t really change anything about the way that I lived. I just did what I wanted…until 10th Grade…share about the chapel with coach Mac

Jesus wants to heal all of us