Word of Salvation – Vol.43 No.18 – May 1998

 

You’ve Never Seen Anything Like it

 

A Sermon by Rev J. Rogers on Mark 2:1-17

Scripture Readings: Mark 2:1-17

 

Congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ.

When someone has a serious sickness, and if it is something that is difficult to diagnose or something for which it is difficult to decide the best treatment, by the time you have diagnosed it and decided upon a course of medication or perhaps, an operation, you would have been through quite a process.  AIDS would have fallen into the difficult-to-diagnose category a decade ago.

But imagine it were for something for which there is also no known cure?  AIDS would still fall into that category.  But then imagine that a homeopath or some other maverick medical practitioner, someone definitely not on the list of registered doctors, discovered a perhaps quite simple and cheap cure and began to experiment with it and have success?  The reaction would be great joy among ordinary people but also, no doubt, amazement and probably disbelief within the regular medical community.  Never in our lives, people might say, have we ever seen anything like this before!

It is something like this that is going on in our passage and, indeed, the flow of the whole story as Mark tells it.  There are a couple of things going on in the first chapter of Mark that help us to understand better what is happening in the story we’re looking at today.

Mark begins by telling us that the Gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begins with repentance – and repentance implies a sad diagnosis: sin!  And the cure can only be had, first of all, by recognising that fact and actually living ever after in terms of it – because we can never be completely rid of sin until Jesus comes again.  And the cure involves submitting ourselves to the doctor’s orders.  But of course, following someone else’s orders is and always shall be, a humbling experience for us.

But in Mark’s first chapter there is also another line of thought that helps to explain this bit about humility.  Not only must we become humble because of our great sin, we must also become humble because of how great our Doctor is.  Indeed, it is actually against this Great Doctor that we have sinned, yet He came to save us nevertheless!

As a matter of fact, it turns out that this maverick healer, who is despised by the National Medical Association as a quack, happens to be the President or Prime Minister of the country! – and who kind of abdicated his high and lofty and exalted position, no, not to go to Med School, but rather the opposite – to become, in every way he could, bar actually contracting our disease, like us sick sinners.  A bit like some early missionaries went and lived in leper colonies.

Now, in a way, all these ideas come together in our story.  There is this mixture of joy and amazement at this cure.  There is disbelief on the part of the spiritual and medical establishment about who is bringing the cure and about his, shall we say, TABLE-side manner.  It’s as if he breaks all the conventions but none of the rules.  And, after all is said and done, things just cannot be as simple as this.  You’ve never seen anything like it in your life.

What is our text saying today, people of God?  Just this: Jesus saves sinners simply by faith.  Jesus saves sinners simply by faith.

Now it is true, there are two stories here.  And from the words, “Once again Jesus went out” in verse 13, there could be any length of time between the two events.  But both of them just bring out two different aspects of how Jesus saves from sin.  So we will look at them both together.

FIRST OF ALL, brothers and sisters, we should see that Jesus has AUTHORITY to forgive sins.  Back in Chapter 1, Mark says the people noticed that Jesus preached in a way they had never heard before.  He did not come and say, “Well, John Calvin says this and Louis Berkhof says that and John Owen says something else and therefore I think we may conclude that what the Bible really means is thus and so.”  That’s how the rabbis and the scribes used to teach and, in itself, it is not necessarily a bad thing.  There can be a proper humility in it.

But neither did Jesus come as the Old Testament prophets and say, “Thus says the Lord.”  He simply came as if He Himself were the One who spoke on Mount Sinai.  He spoke on His own authority and simply said, “Truly, truly, I say unto you!”

“What is this?” the people said, “a new teaching, and with authority – an authority that even the evil spirits have to obey!”  And sickness had to obey!  The people noticed this and they were astonished by it.

But now Jesus Himself speaks about it.  He is in Capernaum, on the shore of Galilee and He is preaching the Word to the people when some very persistent fellows, not being able to get in the door of the house, drop their paralysed friend through the roof on a stretcher down in front of Jesus, and Jesus says, “son, your sins are forgiven.”

Well, the religious establishment was there, sitting – the Presbytery of Galilee, you might call it.  There wasn’t room for anybody else to stand, but they were sitting – perhaps someone had given up their seats out of respect – but you could almost hear the hair on the back of their necks bristle.  “Why does this fellow speak like this?  This is blasphemy!  Only God can forgive sins!”  And, of course, they were absolutely right.  There wasn’t too much wrong with the Pharisees’ logic very often.

Jesus, who “knew what is in man,” knows what is going on in their minds, so He says, “Why do you think these things?  What would be easier for me?  – to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven’?  Of course, that’s very easy – but nobody can prove whether they actually are forgiven or not!  “Or to say to a paralysed man, ‘Get up, take up your bed and walk’?  Yes, that’s the harder thing – because if it doesn’t actually happen in front your very eyes, then I’m a charlatan.”

“Well, so you know that I do have authority on earth to forgive sins, I’ll do the harder thing: son, get up; pick up your bed and carry it home.”  And he did just that.  He walked out in front of them all, carrying his bed!

Now, if a man can do a greater work, surely he can do the lesser – although forgiving sins is really the much greater work than healing a body.  But in terms of how we see and understand things, healing a man who was obviously known in the town as paralysed – and if it were not well known, people would not have been amazed – in terms of our experience, that was the more difficult thing to do.

The whole point of what Jesus was up to was to do something which everybody knew was obviously impossible without divine, miraculous power – to prove He could do the other thing He claimed to be able to do but which could not be proved or disproved in terms that mankind could understand and accept.  And that, by the way, is the point of all Jesus’ miracles.  They were God’s testimony to the fact that, in John’s words, this “Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ, the Son of God.”

 Congregation, I don’t know of any man in history whose life hangs together like Jesus’ does; whose life has integrity, who practised what he preached in every way, as Jesus did; and yet who ever made the stupendous claims for himself that Jesus made.  But not only I, neither does all history!  The overwhelming testimony of history is that Jesus was the greatest man that ever lived – the most humble, truthful, gracious and gentle.

I don’t know of anyone who ever said Jesus was a megalomaniac.  Yet, if He was not the divine Son of God with authority from God to forgive sins, He was the greatest megalomaniac that ever lived.  Far greater and worse than all the monsters of history.  But nobody EVER says that about Him.  Well now then, we also have to be truthful and if we accept that He was truthful, we also have to accept that He was the divine Son with authority to forgive sins.

But not only did He have AUTHORITY to forgive sins…

SECONDLY, Jesus actually CAME to forgive sins.  And this is where we get to the bit about, not His poor BED-side manner, but His non-establishment-style TABLE-side manner.  On another occasion, Jesus was out by the lake preaching, and He came across Levi, a tax collector for the Romans.  Now lepers were one thing, but Jewish tax collectors were quite another.  In every Jewish mind, not just the Pharisees, these men were the pits – and headed for THE pit!  And I don’t think any of us would have felt much different.  It was a bit like a Dutchman collaborating with the Germans during the War.  So, they were despised.

Anyway, Jesus calls this Levi, the treacherous tax collector, to be one of His disciples.  Not only does He forgive this poor PARALYSED fellow his sins, but He also forgives this despicable TURNCOAT his – of all things!  Whatever will be next?!

And this erstwhile treacherous cur rounds up all his mates and invites them to a party to introduce them to his new Saviour and Master.  Now occasionally I get phone calls from all sorts of different people in trouble and I always follow them up as far as I am able – and where appropriate, I take my wife.  It doesn’t happen very often, but it does happen.  But imagine if one of these people became converted and the first thing they said was, “Hey, would you come to dinner with me and the other girls from the massage parlour because I’d like them to hear about this?”

Can’t you just see it in the News from the Churches column in Faith in Focus / Trowel & Sword?  “Rev. Rogers wines and dines with the girls from Roxanne’s!”  I’m sure there’d be a few questions – from you, too, probably.  And I think we’d all have a bit of trouble wondering whether it was wise.  But that’s what Jesus was doing here.  Only, if anything, it was worse, because these people were traitors.

“Why,” the teachers of the Law who were Pharisees asked the disciples, “does your master eat with tax-collectors and sinners?”  (For they were not sinners!)  They had a saying: if God forgives sinners, how much more a righteous man (that is, a man who studies the Law).  Well, it was enough for God to forgive sinners, but for a righteous man, which Jesus obviously was because of how well He knew the Law, to eat with them – that’s a bit over the top.

Jesus’ answer is beautiful.  “Wherever else should I eat?” Jesus had just called His disciples to be fishers of men as He was.  It is no good fishing where the fish are not.  “Who else should I eat with?  I haven’t come to call the righteous.  I came to call sinners!”  Jesus didn’t actually mean that the Pharisees and the scribes were not sinners.  But you can’t cure a man if he refuses to recognise he’s sick.  That’s all He meant.

He put it much more boldly on another occasion: “don’t cast your pearls before swine.”  And swine are not terrible, terrible sinners (in our eyes).  Swine are everybody, including, perhaps especially, respectable people, who poo-poo the Gospel and think they are above it.

Brothers and sisters, this is why Jesus came!  He didn’t come to be a miracle-worker.  “This is why I came; to preach!” He said.  When that paralysed man was let down through the roof right in front of Him, His first thought was not to heal him, but to forgive him his sins.  It is often said that the ministry of the Word and the ministry of practical mercy should go together.  And that’s absolutely right – but there is a priority.  The Gospel, the message of salvation from sin, always comes first because that is, and ever will be, man’s greatest need.

People of God, the very purpose for which Jesus came was to save sinners, real sinners, not half-hearted sinners, but full-blown, hardened sinners – traitors, prostitutes, monsters.  And who’s to say they are greater, more full-blown sinners than any number of very respectable, regular churchgoers like – well, like you and me?  Paul said he was the chief of sinners, but he wasn’t Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin or Idi Amin.

Congregation, I don’t know what it is that will make one the greatest of sinners, but actually, it doesn’t really matter because Jesus saved Levi the traitor, Paul the persecutor, Mary the prostitute and that black man who murdered Nigel Lee’s father – perhaps you read that story in Faith in Focus or Trowel & Sword recently?  They all cover a fair bit of sinful ground, don’t they?

So, what kind of a sinner are you this morning?  It doesn’t really matter because God saves all sorts.  But of whatever sort and however wretched and unworthy of being saved you think you are, doesn’t matter either.  Indeed, the more unworthy of being saved you think you are, the closer to Jesus you are.  He didn’t come to call the righteous.  He came to call sinners.

THIRDLY, Jesus came with authority to forgive sinners by FAITH.  And there are three things to learn about faith here.

First of all, faith alone saves us.  There are only two things we must do to be saved.  The first is that we must realise we need to be saved; we need to realise that we are sinners.  Paul said there was only one thing we need to do, but that was because the fellow he told that to had already realised he needed to be saved.  The Philippian jailor understood that when he said, “What must I do to be saved?” He knew he needed to be saved so he simply asked, “What must I do?”  And Paul’s answer to him is the same as Jesus’ answer here: “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved.”  So, when Jesus saw the faith of these five men, the paralysed fellow and his four friends who carried him, and their determination to get to Him, then He said, “son, your sins are forgiven.”

Of course, in reality it is God who saves us – through faith.  It’s not our faith, as such, that saves us.  We don’t believe in our faith.  It is simply that by faith we reach out and grasp the hand of Christ, as it were.  It is simply believing that He died for us that saves us – which amounts to simply receiving salvation.  And that is no more doing anything to be saved than you actually do anything to receive a present from your mum and dad at Christmas.  You simply accept what they offer you.

The second thing we should know about faith is that we do not receive God’s forgiveness without faith.  We know it is God who puts the faith in our hearts; we know it is all a gift from Him – even realising we are sinners.  But that doesn’t mean whatever will be will be and if I’m to be saved, I’ll be saved without me doing anything.  That’s not predestination – that’s fatalism! Nobody will be saved if they don’t believe in Jesus Christ.  God does not command us to figure out His plans in election.  He calls to us as sinners and rebels, and commands us to repent and believe.  Perhaps you say, I can’t do that unless God enables me to.  Absolutely!  But who are you to try to figure that out?  You are a sinner in the dock.  Your place is not to argue the toss with God, even less to shoot the messenger because you don’t like the message he brings or the way he brings it.  Your place is simply to receive the verdict as a condemned man and cry for mercy.

And here is the great grace.  The Lord of the Privy Council has thundered out the verdict in your case: Guilty as charged – and the wages of sin is death!  But listen.  The Judge hasn’t finished yet.  He has something more to say: repent of your sin and believe in the work of My Son and all will be forgiven.  Not that you will be convicted and discharged.  You will not even be convicted!

Now let’s stop being stupid – do as the Mighty God tells you!  Repent and cry for mercy and believe.  And the moment you humble yourself and do that, you’ll know about God’s election, and not a moment before.

Before you’re an adopted son, the business and plans of the lord of the manor are not yours to know.  Who are you to argue about whom he plans to be gracious to and adopt as his son and whom he doesn’t?  Do you have some right to that grace?  No!  See, we’re talking about mercy and grace and undeserved favour.  We’re not talking about justice and due rewards.  But the moment you repent and cry for mercy and believe Jesus saves wretches even like you, then: son, daughter, your sins are forgiven.

But then there is just one other thing about faith we need to see here, too, and that is that faith moves mountains.  Here are these men with their friend in desperate need.  I suppose they could have said, “Ah, flag it.  If Jesus was really genuine about coming to save the lost and sinners and helpless, He wouldn’t have let Himself get stuck in there with all those other people and Pharisees sitting on chairs with their noses in the air and all the rest of them.  That’s just the trouble with the Church – it’s full of hypocrites!”

They could have given the whole thing away as a bad joke – lots do.  But hang on here a minute.  Who are you to be so indignant at other people’s sins?  Remember where you are.  You’re in the dock with a guilty verdict hanging over your head.  And, of course, you’d never be like that if you became a Christian!  You’d never ever be guilty of hypocrisy, would you?  You’d never ever be inconsistent at times, would you?  You’d never ever still have sins to struggle with all the way to heaven like us, would you?

Is that what you mean by complaining about our hypocrisies and inconsistencies?  We don’t claim to be anything other than sinners, you know.  That’s why we’re here.  If we were righteous, we wouldn’t be here because the Church is only a place where God saves sinners; Jesus only came to save sinners, remember?  Your problem is not really us.  We certainly have problems and may God forgive us all those inconsistencies and hypocrisies and sins you noticed.  But your problem is still that you are very proud and that you still haven’t really accepted the fact that you are a sinner.  The time comes when you’ve got to forget the rest of the world, in a sense, and remember that, ultimately, when we stand in the dock before God, we do so alone.

And if you really believed, your faith would move the mountains of our hypocrisy – just as those fellows moved the roof because their faith drove them to Jesus.  You need to repent of that, too.  God says to you, “Repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved.”  Don’t look at me – God looks at me and that’s quite enough.  Just look at yourself and your own sin and don’t doubt God’s word.  Would you add to your already great guilt and cast a slur upon God’s character into the bargain?

You do indeed deserve hell – as do we all.  But Jesus is waiting to say to every sinner that repents and has real faith that will not be put off by a few silly obstacles: “son, daughter, your sins are forgiven.”  Wouldn’t you like to hear Him say that to you?  Well then, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall hear it immediately.

Amen.