An Interrupted Sermon

If you have your Bibles with you, turn with me if you would to Mark chapter 2. We're going to be looking at verses 1 through 12 today. And when they had made an opening, they let down the bed on which the paralytic lay. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, Son, your sins are forgiven.

Some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts. Why does this man speak like that? He is blaspheming. Who can forgive sins but God alone? And immediately Jesus perceiving in his spirit, if they thus question within themselves, said to them, Why do you question these things in your hearts? Which is easier to say to the paralytic, your sins are forgiven? Or to say, rise, take up your bed and walk? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins, He said to the paralytic, I say to you, rise, pick up your bed and go home.

And he rose and immediately picked up his bed, went out before them all, so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, We never saw anything like this. Bow with me as we go to our Lord in prayer. Heavenly Father, we have a plethora of folks in our church who are in need of your physical touch this morning. I pray for Brenda Torrance as she is suffering from a stroke. I pray for Roy Phillips' wife, Cynthia, who will soon have a tumor removed from her lung. I pray for my brother, Eugene Oldham, as he recovers from a major hip surgery. I pray for my friend, Doug Caldwell, who is suffering with cancer. I pray for all those many who are suffering from COVID. I pray for Nicole Lohse as she heals from the ablation.

Please have mercy on all of these and bring them back to us healthy and strong. Heavenly Father, today we have the privilege of studying a miracle of Jesus. The Lord, you simply spoke the word and a paralyzed man was made completely and totally well. He jumped out of his cot, picked it up, walked home glorifying God. Oh my Lord, I would have loved to have been there.

I would have loved to have seen the joy on his face and the wonder in the expressions of the crowd. But Father, something else happened in this story. You forgave this man of his sins. You not only healed him temporarily, but you saved his soul for all of eternity. That reminds us that this world is not our home. We're just passing through. We often need a physical touch from you when our bodies are sick.

We depend on you for food, shelter, and clothing, but those things come and go. Eternity is where our minds and hearts should be focused. Lord, help us to be gospel saturated, for it is in the precious, holy name of Jesus that we pray. Amen.

You may be seated. One day, Adrian Rogers, the pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, Tennessee, was at home studying, preparing for his sermons. And as he was studying, the telephone rang. It was a lady in and from his church who was in absolute panic. She was wailing and crying. He couldn't even understand her. And finally he said, Lady, you're going to have to calm down, quit crying, and tell me what's wrong. And she said, Dr. Rogers, I'm up at the hospital.

My father has had a massive heart attack and he has died. He said, my father was lost. He didn't know Christ.

And he's in hell right now and will be in hell forever. And she said, I haven't seen my father much lately, and I have never talked to my father about his soul, and I just don't think I can stand it. And Dr. Rogers said to her, Lady, calm down and let me talk. He said, yesterday I was up at the hospital. And he said, I had the opportunity to share the gospel with your dad. And he said, I told your dad about the importance of repentance from sin and to turn to Christ in faith. I told him about Jesus dying on the cross to pay the sin debt for sinners. He talked about the resurrection where Jesus was resurrected from the dead to break the power of death. He said, then I said to your dad, are you ready to make this commitment to Christ?

Are you ready to trust Jesus as your Lord and Savior? Has he done this work in your heart? And he said, your dad broke down in tears. And he said, right there in the bed, he confessed his sin to God. He prayed and he asked Christ to forgive him of all of his sins.

He thanked the Lord for dying for him on the cross and praised the Lord for his resurrection that broke the power of death over him. And said, then finally when he finished praying, he said, I looked at him and there was a peace and there was a joy and there was a confidence in what Christ had done. And said, I believe with all my heart that your dad was genuinely converted.

Adrian said to him at that point in time, mister, why have you waited so long? And the man said to him, I didn't know what to do. He said, you were the first person in my whole life who has ever personally talked to me about my soul.

He said, there was a silence on the other end of the line. And finally he said to her, ma'am, said, your dad is not in hell today. Your dad's in heaven. But what if he had never heard the gospel? Brothers and sisters, it doesn't matter what denomination you're in. It doesn't matter if you're Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist or Pentecostal. The Lord Jesus Christ has a commission on your life and that commission is that you go and tell. Not just that you come and listen, but that you go and tell. Now, I'm a reformed preacher.

I'm a blue-nosed Calvinist. I can't stand it when people think that they have the power to change a sinner's will and to talk a person into salvation. I want you to know it doesn't happen that way. How does it happen? It happens when God regenerates the heart and God puts in the heart a conviction of sin and God draws that person to himself and God gives the ability to respond in faith.

That's when it happens. But what is the tool that God uses to get us to that point? It is the gospel. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.

How can they hear without a preacher, Paul says. What does a Calvinist do when he believes very strongly in the sovereignty of God? Does he say, well, I have no responsibility because salvation is of the Lord, so it doesn't really matter what I do. I have to worry about evangelism. I don't have to worry about the Great Commission.

I don't have to worry about missions. I can do what I want to do because the Lord is going to save who he wills. I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that's not Calvinism. That is hyper-Calvinism and it dishonors God. It kills the church.

It feeds pride and it misses the mark. A true Calvinist will fight hell itself to give the gospel to a lost person. Why? Because he knows that no matter how hardened that person may appear, that God Almighty has the power to reach down into the heart of that person, to change his will, to change his mind, to change his heart, and to save him just like that. We can't save anybody. But, brothers and sisters, we can bring people to the foot of the one who can. Today we're looking at a story about four men who defied the odds and said to themselves, come hell or high water, we're going to get our buddy to Jesus.

I've got five points I want to share with you this morning. Number one is the Capernaum spectators. Look with me at verses one and two. And when he returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home. 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. Jesus and the disciples had been forced to leave Capernaum. The reason for that was Jesus had done so much healing, and these people that he touched or spoke to immediately were healed. All of them were healed, and it was just hundreds and hundreds of them.

And so because of that, his popularity skyrocketed, and he couldn't even go in a city anymore because the crowds were so large. So he had left Capernaum, he'd been gone for several weeks, kind of slipped back into the town. And when he slipped back in, the scripture says he went home. Now where is this home?

This was the home of Simon Peter. Now I love the way the King James Version translates verse one. Let me read that to you in the King James. It says, It was noised abroad that Jesus was in the house, and straightway many were gathered together, and in fact so many that the house could not hold all the people.

You know, that's still the way it is today, isn't it? When people in a community or town, when they hear that Jesus is in the house, or Jesus is in the church, they'll come. So when you're talking to people about Grace Church, don't tell them who's preaching here. Don't tell them who's leading the music. Tell them Jesus is here.

Brothers and sisters, the crowd will come. Then when they gathered together, Jesus did something special. The scripture says he preached the Word to them. He preached the Word to them.

This is not a healing service. He was preaching the Word to them. And this is important, that wherever we labor, it ought to be noised abroad that Jesus is the center of attraction, the sum and substance of everything that we're doing. And when a group meets, the Word of God needs to be preached.

Let's get into the story. The house where Jesus is preaching is crammed filled with people. There's a line out the door a mile long. People are hanging out the windows. Others are right there at the walls listening to what's going on. All this is taking place.

One commentator said it this way. As always, the crowds primarily consisted of inquisitive onlookers and miracle seekers. More interested in pursuing their own desires than in mourning over and repenting from sin, thereby seeking salvation from Christ. There were, of course, some genuine followers and true believers, but they represented a small minority. For the most part, the multitudes remained spiritually indifferent to Jesus, drawn by their curiosity and fascination with his supernatural works, ultimately unwilling to embrace his saving words. Despite such spiritual apathy and ambivalence, the Lord continued to preach to the thrones, knowing that the Father would draw out the elect from among them. On this occasion in the house in Capernaum, as was his custom, he was speaking the Word to them. Alright, point to the paralyzed sinner.

Look at verses 3 and 4. And they came, bringing to him a paralytic carried by four men. 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.

Now, you know the story. There was this paralytic who had four friends. These were good buddies of his who cared for him very deeply. And the paralytic and these four buddies believed that if they could just get this man to the feet of Jesus, that Jesus could heal him. And so they went to this house.

But Luke's gospel tells us that when they got there, they couldn't even approach the door. The crowd was so great. They had carried this man on a cot, put it up on their shoulders, and they carried it across this hot Israeli sunshine just beaming down on them. And they were carrying it, and it was hot. I'm sure they were getting tired. And then they approached the house. And when they get to the house, they realize that it's so crowded, it's going to be a tough, tough situation. Now, I wonder what we'd have done if we'd have been right there in their shoes. How would we have handled it? I can picture some of us saying, well, I gave it my best shot, but it's too crowded around here for me. Or maybe, ah, the Lord knows my heart, and I tried. Or maybe we can come back tomorrow when the crowds might be a little slimmer. Folks, these men did not take that approach.

They denied all the difficulty. And they said, we have come here to do a job. We have come here specifically to bring a man to the feet of Jesus. We have come here specifically to see our buddy healed.

And we're going to do everything that we can to get him to the Lord. So I can just see these men kind of looking around to see how they're going to do it. And they go all the way around the house, check out the back door, checking out all the windows, and there's no luck there. So they kind of step back and say, let's think this thing out. How can we do this? Hey, maybe we can just dig a tunnel through the floor and come up that way. So now it would take too long. One guy says, I got an idea. Wait.

Wait for me. And so he takes off. He runs down to a friend's house. In just a minute, he's coming back, and he's carrying a ladder on his shoulder. He gets back to the house, and he takes that ladder, and he puts it up against the house. He climbs up the top to the roof. He's got ropes in his hands. He throws the ropes down. He says, guys, tie the four corners of the pallet, of the cot, where our buddy's lying, to tie them up, and then come up here with me. And they did. They took the ropes, and they hoisted him up to the top of the roof. Brother, there he is. What happened here? They denied the difficulty.

They said, we don't care how tough this situation looks. We believe that God is in this thing, and we're going to do everything that we can to get our buddy to Jesus. Now you've got to picture this in your mind. Jesus is down in the house. He's preaching. Right in the middle of the sermon, every eye's on him. They are listening intently to every word that Jesus has to say, and then all of a sudden, right in the middle of his sermon, there's an interruption. A big interruption. I mean, all of a sudden, bam!

What happened? It was a big hunk of plaster and mud that falls from the roof, falls from the ceiling, and falls not far from where Jesus is preaching. And so it falls right down on the ground, and then everybody looks up to see what's going on, and they see straw and dirt just falling from the roof, and then all of a sudden there's a hole there, and they look up, and there's four guys that are looking down at them. And so by this time, Jesus just stops his preaching. And the guys that are up there keep digging the hole bigger, and they do it bigger and bigger and bigger until finally it's big enough so they can lower their friend on his cot all the way down to Jesus' feet.

And that's exactly what they do. Jesus is standing there. That cot comes right down in front of him. And you can just see these four guys with their heads sticking through that hole, looking at everybody, everybody looking up at them, and they've done all that they can do. But despite incredible odds, they have gotten their buddy to the feet of Jesus. Folks, it took four to get one to Christ.

It still does. It takes the love of the Father, the blood of the Son, the power of the Holy Spirit, and the witness of a believer. And there's only one end of that pallet or that cot that's not being held up very well. Whose house was this? This was Peter's house.

Now, think about it. Peter's down there listening to the sermon, and all of a sudden he sees somebody tearing his roof up. I mean, all of a sudden, this roof has got a huge hole in it. It's got to be costly.

Somebody's got to fix that thing. And you'd think that Peter would be fussing, yelling, and screaming, and ranting and raving. Well, you don't hear anything from Peter.

Well, why not? Well, I think what happens next explains it. And that takes us to my third point, and that is the loving Savior. Look at verse 5. And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, Son, your sins are forgiven. I've heard people preach on this passage, and they leave you with the impression that these men in the paralytic were only concerned about his physical healing.

If that's really about all they cared about, they just wanted to see their paralytic buddy able to move and to function and to not be paralyzed any longer. But that's not the truth, because the Scripture says that Jesus saw their faith. The paralytic knew that he had a much bigger problem than physical paralysis. He knew that he was a sinner. He knew he had no assurance of salvation. He knew that he was headed for an eternal hell, and that was a million times worse than physical paralysis. Jesus saw his faith.

What does that mean? It means Jesus was able to look into this man's heart, and he saw that this man, this paralytic lying there, he saw that he believed that Jesus was the Messiah, that he was the Son of God, that he was the way, the truth, and the life, that there was no hope of heaven except through this Jesus. He was able to see all that, and he knew that this man had a desire to get rid of his sins and put his faith in Christ. Remember when Peter witnessed to Cornelius the centurion?

The Scripture says this, because of him, that's Jesus, all the prophets bear witness that through his name everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins. So Jesus looked down at this man lying on the pallet, and poor man couldn't hardly move, and he says to him, Son, your sins are forgiven you. This man lying on the pallet, this paralytic, was in a situation much like the tax collector in Luke chapter 18.

You remember that story? He went off into the corner of the temple, didn't want anybody to see him, was totally embarrassed, wouldn't even look up, but he took his hands, he balled them up in his fist and beat on his chest, and he said, Oh God, have mercy on me, a sinner. The Scripture says that the tax collector went home justified, and folks, I want you to know that this paralytic went home justified as well.

So here's the question. How are we saved? We are not saved by our decision. We are not saved by our good works. We are not saved by being religious. We are saved by the sovereign grace of God. For by grace are you saved through faith, that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. Jesus said in John 6 44, he said, No man can come to me, no man can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. In Romans chapter 9, Paul said it beautifully, in Romans 9 verses 10 through 16, it says that not only so, but also when Rebecca had conceived children by one man, our forefather Isaac, though they were not yet born, and had done nothing, either good or bad, in order that God's purpose of election might continue, not because of works, but because of him who calls. She was told the older will serve the younger, as it is written, Jacob, I have loved, he saw, I have hated.

What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God's part? By no means. It says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, I will have compassion on whom I have compassion, so that it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who has mercy. If you had asked this paralytic what he did, what he did to get forgiven, he would have said, Oh, it's not what I did, it's what Jesus did.

It's what Jesus did. All right, that takes us to point four, the hard-headed scribes. Look at verses six through 11. Now some of the scribes are sitting there questioning in their hearts, why does this man speak like that? He is blaspheming.

Who can forgive sins but God alone? And immediately Jesus, perceiving in his spirit that they thus question within themselves, said to them, Why do you question these things in your hearts? Which is easier to say to the paralytic, Your sins are forgiven, or to say, Rise up, take up your bed and walk, but that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins. He said to the paralytic, I say to you, rise, pick up your bed and go home.

This is an amazing thing. The scribes have not spoken, they've not said a word. They are just thinking. But Jesus reads their thoughts.

What were they thinking? They were thinking that Jesus was committing blasphemy. Jesus declared a man to be eternally forgiven, and only God has the right to do that. So their conclusion was this, Jesus is not God, he has no right to forgive, so Jesus is blaspheming. Now in the Jewish culture in the first century, there were three levels of blasphemy. Number one, a person was charged with blasphemy if he spoke evil against the law of God.

Both Paul and Stephen were falsely accused of doing that. And then a second level of blasphemy was even more serious, and that's when you spoke evil against God himself. Maybe using God's name as a curse word, or just cursing God, that was a sin that was punishable by death.

But then there was one that was even worse, the third one. And the most heinous was this, a sinful human being that claimed to possess divine authority and equality with God was blaspheming. The religious leaders, that's what they were thinking about Jesus. And when Jesus was finally crucified, that's what he was accused of doing. So how did Jesus deal with these accusations of blasphemy?

How did he deal with it? He demonstrated his deity in three ways. Number one, he read their minds. Nobody had said anything here, but he knew their thoughts. He knew what they were thinking. Folks, only God is omniscient.

Only God is all-knowing. In John chapter 2, verse 25, the scripture says Jesus knew what was in man. Secondly, he agreed with their thoughts that only God can eternally forgive sin. He agreed with that. He knew that that was true, that only God can forgive sin in such a way as it removes all the consequences and sets that person absolutely free. Only God can do that. He said, that's okay, because I'm God.

That was his answer. And number three, Jesus backed up his claim by demonstrating his power. So he turns to the religious leaders and he says to them, which is easier to say to the paralytic? Which is easier to say, your sins are forgiven you? Or to say this to him, rise up, take up your bed and walk?

And you know what they're thinking. Oh, what's easier is this, to say to them, your sins are forgiven. Why was that easier? Because there's no positive empirical way to confirm or deny it.

You couldn't. Eternal forgiveness cannot be immediately tested. Let me tell you what can be immediately tested. When Jesus turned to this man and said, rise up, take up your bed and walk, that could be immediately tested. Huh. Look at verses 10 and 11 again. Listen carefully. But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins, he said to the paralytic, I say to you, rise, pick up your bed and go home.

Man, you talk about a challenge. Everybody there knew, and they were saying to themselves, Jesus is putting his reputation on the line. If he tells this man to rise up, take up his bed and walk, and to go home, then that man doesn't do it. And everybody's gonna say, well, Jesus is just a phony. And if Jesus can't heal physically, certainly he can't heal spiritually.

Wow. You see how Jesus set this up? He set this up beautifully. He first of all dealt with the man's soul. He dealt with his heart first, and he left the physical healing to later.

Why did he do that? To let us know that eternal healing is a much, much more important thing than temporary physical healing. Like point five is a miraculous surprise. Look at verse 12. And he rose and immediately picked up his bed, went out before them all, so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, we never saw anything like this. So Jesus says to the paralytic, arise, take up your bed and walk.

And there is no waiting period here. Immediately the guy jumps right up, and he is perfectly well. It's like he's never been paralyzed. I mean, he gets up and he's walking around, he's jumping, he's praising God. He reaches down, he takes that pallet, that cot, and he folds it up, puts it on his shoulder, and the scripture says in Luke 5 that not only did he go home, but he went home glorifying God. We will see later on that this almighty, sovereignly powerful, totally undeniable miracle had very little effect on the religious crowd. It did not change many of their minds. It just made them mad and resentful. It made them want to do something to Jesus, and they wanted to see him dead so that all of this stuff could be done away with. Can you imagine the religious leaders and how they responded to the paralytic's healing?

They didn't run over to him and pat him on the back, saying, man, we're happy about this. Look at you. Man, this is amazing what's happened to you. You're perfectly well. It said, look at your legs. Your legs were limp and they were lifeless, and now they're muscular and powerful. You couldn't even raise your head up off the cot, and look at you now. You're jumping around praising God.

Wow, we don't know much about this Jesus, but my goodness, is he powerful. That's what they could have said, but there's none of that. What are the religious leaders doing? They're kicking the ground.

They're spitting in the dirt. They're mad as they can be. They're resentful. They could care less that this paralytic has been healed. They're just mad.

They're mad because the people are turning away from them and turning to Jesus. The rest of the crowd responded differently, didn't they? The rest of the crowd was glorifying God, and they said, man, we have never seen it like this. John MacArthur had a great conclusion to this passage.

He said this. Jesus' miracles functioned as signs validating his claim that he possessed divine authority to forgive sinners. Moreover, Jesus not only had the power to forgive sinners, he became the perfect sacrifice on which divine forgiveness is based.

The words Jesus spoke to that paralyzed man two millennia ago are the same words he still speaks to all who come to him in genuine faith. Your sins are forgiven. The greatest benefit Christianity offers to the world is the forgiveness of sins. Jesus Christ made forgiveness possible through his death on the cross. He offers that forgiveness to all who are willing to repent of their sin and to believe in his name.

Ask yourself a question. Are my sins forgiven? Are my sins under the blood of Jesus? If not, would you run to Jesus today an attitude of repentance and putting your faith in him and him alone?

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, as we work our way through the Gospel of Mark, we've become more and more convicted that we are coming far short of our calling. We saw four men in this story who had such a burden for their friend that they carried him on a pallet, pulled him up with ropes to the top of the roof, tore the roof open, and lowered him to Jesus. It appears that Jesus was pleased with their efforts. He stopped right in the middle of a sermon, ministered to this man, both spiritually and physically.

Our situation is somewhat different today. Jesus is not with us physically, but the urgency is the same. We need to get serious about bringing people to the foot of the cross. We don't have the ability to talk someone into salvation, but we do have the ability to share the Gospel. Lord, help us to be more faithful. May we be a witness to our family, to our friends, to our acquaintances, and even to our enemies. May we remember Romans 10-17 that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. Help us to be faithful, Lord, for it is in Jesus' precious name we pray. Amen.