Actions Louder than Words (Part A)

We are not free from fear, but we are to face fear with God. We understand that. There have been troops throughout history who have died facing fear in the causes that they were fighting for, and we're not to be any less honorable in the cause that we live for, the person that we live for, and that is, of course, Jesus Christ.

Christians suffer and live and die just like everyone else, but not as everyone else. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher, Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel, Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the Gospel of Mark.

Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. Today, Pastor Rick will continue teaching in the Gospel of Mark. He'll be in Chapter 2.

He's sharing a brand new message called Actions Louder Than Words. Turn to the Gospel of Mark, Chapter 2, please, and we will take verses 1 through 12. And again he entered Capernaum after some days, and it was heard that he was in the house. Immediately many gathered together, so that there was no longer room to receive them, not even near the door, and he preached the word to them. Then they came to him, bringing a paralytic who was carried by four men.

When they could not come near him because of the crowd, they uncovered the roof where he was. So when he had broken through, they let down the bed on which the paralytic was lying. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, Son, your sins are forgiven you. And some of the scribes were sitting there and reasoning in their hearts, why does this man speak blasphemies like this?

Who can forgive sins but God alone? And immediately when Jesus perceived in his spirit that they reasoned thus within themselves, he said to them, why do you reason about these things in your hearts? Which is easier to say to the paralytic, your sins are forgiven you, or to say, arise, take your bed, and walk? But that you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins, he said to the paralytic, I say to you, arise, take up your bed, and go to your house. Immediately he arose, took up the bed, and went out in the presence of them all so that all were amazed and glorified God saying, we never saw anything like this.

Actions louder than words is what we're getting. But before I begin going through the verses, I want to preface what's going on with preaching the Word of God and the days we live in. By faith, we Christians are to face fear and panic and everything else, good times, bad times, by faith, learning about Jesus is to increase our faith, make us stronger, hearing about how Christ behaved himself, how he treated others, his miracles, his teachings, everything about him. When we are exposed to these things repeatedly, we are to get stronger in our faith. It is a contributing factor to being a strong believer. Proverbs 3, we read, do not be afraid of sudden terror nor of trouble from the wicked when it comes, for Yahweh will be your confidence and will keep your foot from being caught.

Now of course, Jesus Christ of the New Testament is Yahweh of the Old Testament. We are not free from fear, but we are to face fear with God. We understand that. There have been troops throughout history who have died facing fear in the causes that they were fighting for, and we're not to be any less honorable in the cause that we live for, the person that we live for, and that is of course Jesus Christ, Christian sufferer, live and die just like everyone else, but not as everyone else. We are to be different in how we respond, what we do, how we influence those around us. Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, he says, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope. Of course, the point that he is making is we have a greater hope. We have Jesus Christ of the scripture, and we want to live as though we have him, no matter what is going on around us.

We are supposed to live differently. We need inspiration to do this, and that inspiration comes in different ways. Of course, in singing songs to the Lord and hearing testimonies of others, of being encouraged or being encouraged by others, but always as its foundation, our encouragement, our inspiration is built upon the Word of God. As we read here in verse 2, he preached the Word to them, and you take that away from the Christian experience, and you're left with gibberish. You're left with something that's not what God intended it to be, and once the mind is panicked, stricken, it begins to translate everything into negatives, and once it begins to translate everything into negatives, it has no good news to preach. And this verse by verse through the Gospel of Mark is exactly what we Christians need. Death kills its thousands, but fear kills its ten thousands, and being aware of that, we are excited to take the Gospel into every nook and cranny of society where we find ourselves. Are we to be silenced in fear and panic while Satan gets to preach his sermons, while he gets to influence others, while he gets to speak?

Of course not. So Paul wrote to the Corinthians, he says, yes woe is me if I do not preach the Gospel, no matter what, no matter what's going on in society around us. The world says give them hell, and we say give them Jesus, and we're the ones that are supposed to be doing the giving through the power of the Holy Spirit. When bombs were falling on England in World War II, when England was even in the war in the First World War, there were great men of God in London that were preaching the Word of God, and over the years in my ministry I've searched for sermons, their sermons, I have collections of their sermons on the preaching on the war, and it's very difficult to find them making any comments on the wars.

What I found, they were just preaching the Word systematically to their people, and in so doing they armed their people to face whatever came through the doors of their lives. Men like G. Campbell Morgan and F. B. Meyer and Martin Lloyd Jones, they preached the Word, and in so doing they prepared their congregations to stand as Christians, and we love them for it. That's why we're so attracted to Richard Wambrandt, tortured for Christ, and Corey Ten Boom's hiding place, because it's Christ-centered, not panic-centered.

And as we are going through the Gospel of Mark around in this season of confusion and doubt and all the other craziness, Christ isn't crazy, and neither are his people to be crazy. As Christians, we know what we're supposed to do. We're supposed to trust God and preach, and I hope that's what is moving you in your life, what moves you in your heart.

Protect your family, and of course, exercise your rights, but also exercise Christian influence. That's your purpose as a Christian, is to preach Christ whenever you can. And when Jesus walked the Jews of his day, they wanted a Messiah that would deliver them from the Romans. They did not want a Messiah who suffered for others. That's what they got. They got the Messiah who did it his way, not their way. They wanted to slay their enemies, and Christ wanted to save them. And so I think pastors should preach what Christ gives them to preach and not what anybody wants to hear. Hopefully they want to hear what Christ gives him to preach. That's the ideal. Well, that's my 50 cents.

This two cents seems so humiliating. Now we go to the first verse of Mark chapter 2, built on the foundation of we will preach the Word in season and out of season. And again, he entered Capernaum after some days, and it was heard that he was in the house. It is likely Peter's house. That's the last house we read about him staying in while in Capernaum. Capernaum's not that big of a city in that day as cities go in that day. He's not in the synagogue preaching and teaching.

He's in someone's house. In verse 2, immediately many gathered together so that there was no longer room to receive them, not even near the door. And he preached the Word to them. Well then, there was always a crowd around Jesus as he moves through the New Testament. It's always these crowds. In fact, the apostles largely were there for crowd control.

That was a big part of their job description. Nowadays, it's not crowds. It's clouds that seem to surround Jesus. People are foggy about him in a very unfortunate and negative way. And sadly, many professing Christians contribute to this.

It's so unnecessary. The gospel has such a simple message, it's so profound in its simplicity, that there really should not be much confusion about who the Christ really is. Here he preaches to the people, and it's evident that they were excited about this. Yes, they had seen miracles, but at this stage, they are there listening and receiving what he has to say.

We could look at the Sermon on the Mount to get an idea of what his early sermons were about, and we look a little further and we see that many of his sermons included, of course, the parables that we love so much. My greatest quest in my life, and I think it is true of every Christian, is to obey what is preached from the Word, what the Bible tells us. That's our quest in life. We want to be obedient.

We want that well-done, good and faithful servant. And yet, we find ourselves in this quest, often paralyzed, unable to move towards obedience because of this dual nature that we're saddled with, the spiritual man fighting the carnal man, the natural man, that sinner in us. And yet, we are still called to face temptation, and we're called to face the devil and his opposition. Here, Christ is facing the opposition from religious leaders.

In a moment, we're going to get that. He had already faced the devil in the synagogue when the devil said, we know who you are. Let us alone. We have nothing to do with you, Jesus. And of course, Christ cast that devil out. In Psalm 107, there's an interesting verse that has to do with why the leaders in Christ's day could not understand who he was or receive who he was.

Psalm 107, verse 11, because they rebelled against the words of God and despised the counsel of the Most High. This is the very thing Jesus is doing in the house. He's giving the Word of God. He's giving the counsel of the Most High. And there were those that really were just sitting there, judging him, looking for an opportunity to attack him and not listening to what he was saying. Well, people come to church so many times, and they're not interested really in what the preacher's saying. They're waiting for him to say something so they can pounce or have a reason not to come back to church. You look at the opposition in the world, and you look at the opposition that Christ faced in Scripture, and you know, after a while, it just gets boring. It's not very creative.

It's not impressive. But we have to face it nonetheless, and we have to be ready for it. And all we have to do is preach what we have seen. That makes us a witness to tell it like we have experienced it.

In verse 3, pardon me, so long as those experiences go along with Scripture's revelation and not outside, not contrary to. Verse 3, then they came to him, bringing a paralytic who was carried by four men. In this paralyzed man, we have a picture of the helplessness of the sinner. We have the fact, the historical fact, that there was someone that was paralyzed that could not walk on their own.

They had to be carried. That is the historical fact. But it also has an application. It pictures for us the paralysis that goes with being a sinner. We're helpless. We can't get to Christ on our own.

We need someone to take us to him. The leper that he had cleansed in the previous chapter, at the end of the previous chapter, in this paralytic, speak to us about those who are unclean and those who are incapable. I have been unclean and I have been incapable.

And Christ has cleansed me and he continues to cleanse me because I need that. And as far as my paralysis goes, he is the one that helps me walk because I agree with him. Two can't walk together unless they agree. But there are people out in the world that don't agree with Christ for a host of reasons. Some are irretrievable, unreachable, at least for us.

Others are not. And it is our responsibility to be in tune with the Holy Spirit to know who's who when he brings us in front of someone who can benefit from what we have to offer, which is the truth concerning God Almighty, the Creator, the one whom everybody will stand before at one point or another because every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess before him. Well, he could do nothing to help himself, could not come to Jesus as I mentioned. Others had to bring him and they had to work hard to do it. This was not something that was going to be easy for anyone.

But it was going to be amazing. In verse 4, and when they could not come near him because the crowd, because of the crowd, they uncovered the roof where he was. So when they had broken through, they let down the bed on which the paralytic was lying.

Let's take that first clause again. And when they could not come near him because of the crowd. People in the crowd weren't giving any space to the handicap or anybody else. They had crowded into this presumably relatively small house and they weren't going to move and make space for him to get through. They knew he had come there for healing.

They were all aware of what Jesus had already accomplished there in Capernaum. They uncovered the roof, it says here. They uncovered the roof where he was. Again, this is Peter's roof.

Peter is probably sitting very close to Christ and he all of a sudden in the middle of Christ preaching someone's tearing up his roof. And he's helpless to do anything. What's he going to do? He can't even get out. It's so crowded if he gets out.

If he squeezes his way out by the time he makes it to the roof they would have done sufficient damage already. He's watching this happen and he's retelling the story years later to Mark. Those were the good old days. Right now we're making memories and hopefully this is part of what will be the good old days when you sat in a church and you heard the word of God preached and then you went out of the church and you did something with what the Holy Spirit pointed out to you.

These memories that we're forming, may they be the good old days for the kingdom of God. Well, they uncovered the roof. Now most of the buildings in ancient Israel were flat-top roofs with beams going across so that you could lay the bundles of straw or brushwood that was mixed in with mud. In fact, the roofs in those days were green in some seasons because the seeds were within the mud and the straw and it would sort of grow up on your roof.

Not too much but enough to turn it green. We even read about it several places. I just chose one, Psalm 129 verse 6, let them be as the grass on the housetops which withers before it grows up. And that one little saying, the psalmist there is telling us about his, it's like a time capsule, he's telling us about how the roofs were in Israel. And I point this out because had it been my roof where I live, this would have been a very big deal. And I don't know, it would have been really a dilemma, you know. Get them off my roof quickly or let the man get healed.

Hmm. So anyway, my point is all Peter could do was sit there and watch men break through to get to Christ. What was going on in their heads when this was happening?

Amazing story. It says here, so when they had broken through, they were compelled to bring their suffering friend into the presence of Christ because that's where they knew the miracles were ready to be given. They just knew Christ would do something. Now let's not get sidetracked by the miracles. Much of why Christ healed everywhere he went is because he is God the Son and no sickness could stand in his presence.

No one stayed dead when Jesus was there. And these are statements to believers. Not that, you know, you're going to be going to do miracles throughout your, you know, ministry as a Christian, but that this is who you serve.

You serve Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And while he walked, he left unmistakable proofs as to his identity for us to go forward and preach what he's, we're in the age of preaching, not in the age of miracles. We're in the age of truth. The truth is what will get people into heaven. Judas Iscariot saw more miracles than anybody you'll ever meet in this life and yet he still went to hell. And so it's not, it's the miracles, they really are secondary in that sense. They're not secondary coming from the hand of Christ, but they're secondary in the sense that the mission is to get people into heaven through the truth. And if miracles can help, then God will grant them.

But he doesn't seem to grant them anywhere near as he did in the day that Christ walked the earth. Well, here it is, they broke through. You could say, friends through the roof, a kind of an experience. These four men, they sought to get to Jesus. It was now or never.

That, that's the kind of the energy behind this. Today is the day. He might leave Capernaum tomorrow. He did it before. He went through Galilee preaching and maybe they missed him that time. And this time, he said, he's in the house of Peter again. And they came there and they couldn't get past the crowds, so they went around the side and went, got themselves up on the roof and started tearing the roof up to bring this man to Christ. What a, what a picture.

What an illustration. If this man is a picture of one that can't walk to Christ on their own, it is also a picture of those who can bring others to Christ. It says here that they let him down on the bed. And here he is, helpless, hoping they won't drop him.

Everyone is watching. And it is, verse five, when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, son, your sins are forgiven you. Seeing their faith, he is now going to open the doors of, of course, divine forgiveness. He didn't come there to be forgiven.

In his head he came to receive the ability to walk again. Son, your sins are forgiven you. Two wonderful words of the Gospel are here, son and forgiven. Well, the first word places the man in the family of God.

He's a child of God by his faith. The second word keeps the man in the family of God. Forgiveness, recurrent grace. Grace is not just one, something we get once. Grace is available, grace and mercy are available to the believer, believer throughout the believer's life. Otherwise, we would have such a fragile salvation that it just wouldn't work.

Satan would tear us apart. But he can't because of this grace and this mercy. That mercy is God withholding judgments we deserve. That grace is God giving us the gifts and the blessings that we don't deserve. Because he is God of love, because he is full of grace and truth. Here he is, again, to hear God tell the story, the most important need this man has is the forgiveness of sins, not the ability to walk with his feet and legs. The forgiveness of sins, that is God's perspective. This is what God gives him without even being asked, because Christ dealt with the greater need.

We get tripped up by this very easily, especially because of pain. I know if I'm in a lot of pain, I'll reach for the Tylenol before I reach for a sermon, because I want the pain to stop. There's some logic in that, of course. But we're coming to the scripture to get more than logic. We're coming to get the logic from God over our lives. A doctor can take a person only so far in this life, up to the grave, and that's it.

Can't do any more for him. But of course, the great physician, he puts holiness on us through his own blood, because he puts holiness before happiness. Not that he is looking, he wants us to be happy too, to a degree, to a point, but holiness comes before happiness and the mission comes before the men. That is the principle of all successful military commanders. It is a principle even with the kingdom of God. That's what the cross, the emblem we have, says that the cross of Christ nevertheless not my will be done, but your will be done. It is hard to get to that place.

It is not easy to stay in that place. One has to continue to build up the inner man, to build up the faith. Faith comes by hearing and hearing the word of God. One has to be around other Christians to develop these things. By the sweat of the brow, we go through this life and that's an understatement.

But we are still supposed to be victorious in the midst of it all. And those who convince themselves that they are somehow not so bad of a person in the presence of God are spiritually delusional. The greatest need is to be forgiven of their sin. Thanks for tuning in to Cross Reference Radio for this study in the book of Mark. Cross Reference Radio is the teaching ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia. To learn more information about this ministry, visit our website, crossreferenceradio.com. Once you're there, you'll find additional teachings from Pastor Rick. We encourage you to subscribe to our podcast. When you subscribe, you'll be notified of each new edition of Cross Reference Radio. You can search for Cross Reference Radio on your favorite podcast app. That's all we have time for today, but we hope you'll join us next time as Pastor Rick continues to teach through the book of Mark, right here on Cross Reference Radio.