Christ Heals a Paralytic - 1

Well, good morning. What a delight to be back here with you at Beacon. I feel like I'm coming home. We've had a long association, and I'm so thankful for you, your church, your pastor, your staff. Everybody here has become very precious to Paul and I, and we thank you for your kindness to us once again.

Thankful to the Lord for His mercy in getting us here. That's not to be taken away. You're not taken for granted these days.

You pay your money, you take your chances, you know. But we made it. Thank the Lord. And turn with me, if you would, in your text, back to our text, Luke 5, if you'd like to follow along as I cover this this morning. And as your pastor has already informed you, my theme is Glimpses of Grace from the Gospel of Luke. I find Luke's Gospel very special to me for a number of reasons. And you may know that from the earliest days of the church, Luke's Gospel was sort of seen as Paul's Gospel. Remember, Luke was the traveling companion of Paul. He was not around when these things were happening. He certainly learned it probably from a number of sources. But there are certain things found in the Gospel of Luke that aren't found in the other Synoptic Gospels that sort of stick out.

This would be the kind of thing Paul would say. That's at least how I see it. You may see it differently.

That's okay. But it is special to me, especially for that reason. We're going to be looking at five of these glimpses of God's grace found in this passage. As we approach it this morning, I want to ask you a question. If I had to ask you which of all of Christ's miracles was the greatest?

What would you say? You know, we're sort of obsessed, aren't we? I think especially men. We're obsessed with which is the greatest. I mean, there's this tournament going on right now I've heard about.

Why is that? Because we want to know who's number one, right? Who's the best? Who's the fastest? Who's the richest? Who's the strongest?

Some men especially are obsessed with this. We want to know who the goat is, the greatest of all time. Well, think about this. Of the works of Jesus, and I'm not talking about himself, the own miraculous conception and incarnation of Christ, nor his resurrection. But I'm talking about the miraculous works that he himself performed.

Which would you say is the greatest? I mean, you've got a pretty good smorgasbord of choices out there, don't you? How about that first one, changing water into wine, or the Baptist version, turning the wine into water. But the idea of changing something from its elemental form into another, that is an amazing thing. I'm a physicist.

I studied physics in college. I look at that and say that's just absolutely impossible. But here Christ performs it. Or what about when he's out there on the Sea of Galilee in the midst of the storm and stands up and says, peace be still.

I mean, this guy controls the weather with his voice. Or how about that man that came running to him, consumed with leprosy, and Jesus, he says to Jesus, Lord, if you will, you can make me clean. And Jesus said, I will, and touches him, and instantly he's made whole. He healed.

There is a difference. The fascinating thing about his encounter with blind men is not just the fact that he can heal them, but he can heal them pretty much any way he wants to. Sometimes he heals them by speaking. One time he spit in the man's eyes. I had a preacher ask me one time, which is more spiritual, to speak or to spit?

I don't know. And born blind, that he makes spittle in the clay and mixes it, puts it on his eyes, and tells him to go wash. Amazing, amazing things. And the people there said, we've never seen anything like this. I, however, perhaps look at things a little differently. And I might submit to you that the miracle before us in our text just might be the goat, the number one.

Miracle that our Lord performed. Now I'm gonna let you chew on that a little while. And before we finish, I'll come back and try to give you my reasoning.

Let me just let you sort of mull that over in your mind as we go. Notice where we find ourself. Up on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee, he's been in the synagogue where he cast the devil out of a man. And he leaves the synagogue, and he enters into a house. It's the house of Simon Peter. Notice Simon's mother, or his wife's mother. His mother-in-law is sick with a fever.

He heals her. He has relocated to Capernaum. Remember, he grew up in Nazareth. And the first beginning of his ministry is there in his hometown, but the hometown folks grow so enraged at his claims that they drag him out, take him to a cliff, and are about to throw him off the cliff.

So he leaves his hometown of Nazareth and relocates a little further north, a little further east to the north shore of the Sea of Galilee, this village called Capernaum. We're able to explore the ruins, and I'll share a little of that with you just because it gives us a little bit of background and insight into what's going on in this text. What you find there is an area that is covered in what's called black basalt.

Basalt is a volcanic rock. Apparently, there was a volcanic eruption in this area at some part in the ancient past. And this black stuff is everywhere, and what they have uncovered, this was covered over with ground for a long time, preserved there.

But they've uncovered a lot of it, and you'll find the foundation stones made out of this black basalt all over the place. It was a village probably of a couple of thousand people, and you find these foundations that still lie there buried under the soil. And the most interesting feature is there's a synagogue that they have excavated and sort of rebuilt, and it's made out of this white limestone. It's a very impressive structure.

However, the archaeologists tell us that it was not built till about the fourth or fifth century of several hundred years after our Lord. But what is most interesting, at least to me, is the fact that you sort of look at the foundation, and the foundation is a little bit askew. And you can see that underneath it, there was an earlier foundation of this black basalt. And that is the foundation of the structure here in Capernaum where Jesus himself is teaching, so that foundation is still there even though the newer structure was built over it on top. And then about 50 yards away, over towards the Sea of Galilee, remember the synagogues generally are going to be pointing in the direction of the temple, so this one points to the north. And over there about 50 yards away is the ruins of one of these old houses in Capernaum they call Peter's house. Now I'm a little skeptical. We've been in Nazareth, and there they've got Mary's well where she went to draw her water.

There's Joseph's carpentry shop. You know, you're going to have to have places like that, try to get a few bucks from the tourists, right? And so I was very, very skeptical when I first saw the claim. I mean, you look at this thing, and they built a structure over the top that looks like a flying saucer that's landed on top of these ruins. It's a real gaudy looking thing, but you can see the ruins underneath it, and then you go up in this church building, and they've got glass in the floor when you can look down on these ruins. So I was very, very skeptical.

I mean, how do they know? Did they dig it up and find Peter's mailbox? You know, Simon Peter? How do you know this is Peter's house? But I went home and began to study what the archaeologists had found there, and after reading and studying this a little bit, I'm about 95% convinced this was Peter's house.

Because what you find there are three different levels. The lowest level is simply the ruins of a common house in Capernaum, like you see all over the place. But there is something special about one of the structures inside this little compound, because later on, a couple of centuries later, a building that was used for public worship was built there. They know that because they find the plaster. No other building in Capernaum had plaster, and when they put plaster on this black ball salt, it meant that it's going to be used for the public. And they've even found graffiti on that plaster with prayers to Jesus, even some.

It's a little bit debatable, some even speaking of Simon Peter. So this seems to be somehow connected with Simon Peter. And then over the top of that is what's called a martyrium. It's an octagonal structure that you find them throughout the Byzantine world, that when Constantine was converted to Christianity and Christianity becomes the favored religion of Rome, they started building these markers. It's like we would put a historical marker over a historical spot to mark it. That's what these martyriums are, and you find them all over the Eastern world, where they mark these historical places, sitting right on top of that same spot.

So everything points to the fact there's something special about that spot. There is the testimony of a pilgrim. She's called Lady Agaria. She was from Spain that took a pilgrimage to Capernaum in the fourth century. She talks about visiting Capernaum and says there that they had turned the house of Peter into a church in her day, which agrees with exactly what was found there in the room.

So why I'm telling you this is that it would seem that that is, in fact, the house where this probably took place. Now, a few other facts about Capernaum. It's low. I didn't realize it till I went there that the Sea of Galilee is 700 feet below sea level.

Now, when you think of below sea level, I mean, in the United States, the lowest spot we have is Death Valley below sea level. What do you think of? I think of heat. It's hot. I didn't realize how hot it got on the Sea of Galilee.

Our guide would say it's nothing. In the summertime, it's nothing to be 105 degrees out there on that lake. Can you imagine being out there on a boat, nothing shielding you from the sun, out there trying to fish? And you read the account in John's Gospel of after his resurrection, Peter and some of the disciples going back out to fish in the Sea of Galilee and it says Peter was naked. Now, that probably doesn't mean he was absolutely naked, but he's stripped down to his underwear.

Why? Because it's hot. And what you found was in these places, they would build their houses of this black basalt, but they would put a flat roof up on top.

And in the hardest part of the year to escape the heat, they would go up on top of the house and sleep upstairs outside in hopes of getting some cooling breezes during this hot, hot time. So all of that figures in very prominently in the text that we find here. We find that our Lord is teaching there in Capernaum.

He has not been there all that long. There are people flocking to hear him and they have crowded into this structure. If it's the house I've been describing to you, it's there in Simon Peter's house. It's packed. Can you imagine the scene that all of a sudden you hear a ruckus? You're in there listening to Jesus teach and suddenly there's a racket, there's noise. And you're absolutely shocked when you begin to see that this noise is coming from up above you and somebody is literally tearing a hole in the roof.

I don't know about you, that would get my attention. And then you no sooner get over that shock, but you realize there's these faces sort of looking down from up there. And before you know it, there's four men lowering a paralyzed man on a bed, some sort of pallet, something like that, probably with four ropes, one at each corner. They're lowering this man through the roof to lay there on the floor right in front of Jesus. What a dramatic scene. And if you're writing the script, what would be the very next words that you would expect to come out of the mouth of our Lord?

I mean, everybody knows. They're all sitting around there. Here's the miracle worker. Here's a man who cannot walk, lowered right in front of him. They all expect to hear him say, man, take up thy bed and walk. And instead, Jesus says, man, thy sins are forgiven thee.

I can almost hear the crowd go, huh. Here we are. We thought we were about to hear or see something that we can talk about for the rest of our lives. We were there when we saw him heal this man. This man who was paralyzed comes in there, lowered down through the ceiling, lying on his bed. Jesus heals him and up he leaves, carrying his bed.

And instead, all he says is, man, thy sins are forgiven thee. But over here in the corner, in the cheap seats, you have the Pharisees. Now, we encounter them throughout Christ's ministry.

It's interesting. They're an unusual group. We don't know exactly how they got the name.

The name itself seems to mean the separated ones. And that's a pretty good label because if Israel was to be a holy people, these guys considered themselves the holy of the holies. These are the holy bunch, the holy crowd. There were only, says Josephus, about 6,000 of them in Israel during Jesus's day.

They seem to be much more numerous because you see them everywhere. But it was a very rigid, strict group. You remember Paul, when he's given his testimony in the letter to the Philippians, talks about being a Pharisee of the Pharisees. He's of the strictest sect, he says, to the Sanhedrin of Jews.

So these are the best of the best, the cream of the crop. And not only in their own eyes, but even in the eyes of the people, it was a common statement that if only two people get into heaven, one will be a scribe and the other will be a Pharisee. So these guys are seen as the religious experts.

Now, of course, they've got opponents. Down there in Jerusalem, there's the Sadducee and sect. But these Pharisees seem to be scattered throughout the land.

And notice here we're way up north in Israel, in the northern part north of the Sea of Galilee. And here we find them watching. They're not there to be taught, they're there to entrap. They're there to catch Jesus. They've come to sort of give a ruling, a critique of this new teacher's new ministry.

They're waiting to see if he can pass the muster, that they can put their stamp of approval on this young man's ministry. And so here they are murmuring over here in the corner and says, we got him now. You're aware of the politics of our day, right? Of how reporters are not so much interested in getting the news as they are in trying to get a soundbite from whoever's running for whatever office to get something that they can then throw up.

And you see the memes, you see it all over the Internet, all over the news of now, you know, just look, look what this fool said. That's what they're there for. And they think they got him.

You can almost see them nudging one another. Did you hear that? We got him now. He just blasphemed. Because who can forgive sin but God alone? And you know what? Technically they're right.

They are. You say, well, how's that? Because sin at its root, I know we speak in a relative way that we sin against one another, I get that. But sin at its heart is what? It is a breaking, a transgression of the law of God.

It's God's law. And so when we transgress the law, we have sinned against God. And that's why our sin is referred to oftentimes as a debt.

You know, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Because if what we owe God is absolute perfect obedience to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourself, when we transgress those commandments, who are we sinning against? We're sinning against God. Oh, yes, I know we sin against each other in a secondary way. But I'm reminded when David gives his penitential psalm in Psalm number 51, he utters these words, against thee, talking to God, against thee and thee only have I sinned. And you won't say, David, what about Bathsheba? You committed adultery with her.

What about Uriah? You murdered him. But David understands this principle. Underneath it all, what makes my sin so exceedingly sinful is I have sinned against my God. And so if sin is seen as an indebtedness to God, who can forgive that debt except God alone? Brother Kent, I'll pick on you.

If I run into your car and total it and I'm not going to pay you anything for it, you might have just you might have a little grievance against me and I wouldn't blame you. I'm indebted to you. I owe you. And let's say Brother Bartman here walks up and says, Ken, I forgive you that debt. What would be my response? I believe I turned to Brother Greg and said, wait a minute, who do you think you are?

I mean, how can you forgive my debt? Do you understand how this works? And that's exactly what the Pharisees are saying. Jesus, who do you think you are? Well, he thinks he's God.

He really does. He believes that he was sent from God, that he is God in the flesh. He believes, as he states in John's gospel, that when he speaks, he's speaking the words of God, that when he works, he's doing the works of God, that when you see him, as he tells Thomas, you're seeing God, right?

Who does this guy think he is? And notice that that really, you know, when you think about this from a philosophical standpoint, he's either God or he's nuts or worse, a liar. Because if you ran into some guy on the street of town one day and he walks up to you and says, I'm the bread of life, or the next day, I'm the light of the world. He that walks in my life will not walk in darkness. Or another day, he says, I'm the resurrection and the life. You believe in me, you'll never die. Or one day you meet him, he says, he that has seen me has seen the Father. What would be your opinion of that guy?

I believe I know. You say, we've got places here in town for folks like you. I believe we need to put an extra layer of rubber on that rubber room in your case. You're nuts. You're crazy.

You're out of it, right? And yet those words, which would sound like sheer lunacy from the mouth of anybody else, when you match them up with who is saying it here, sounds exactly reasonable, exactly normal what you would expect to come out of the mouth of Jesus. Because everything about him confirms and backs up that claim that he is the incarnate Son of God, God in flesh, living among us. But notice that there's a problem here. Jesus has said to this man, man, thy sins be forgiven. And then he's sort of reading their minds because he asked this question, which is easier to say? Here's my two options.

Man, thy sins are forgiven, or take up thy bed and walk, which is easier. Now think about that a minute. I was looking at your flyer here. I see you've got these flyers with my picture on it that you've been passing around.

I'm not sure that's a wise thing to do at this stage of life. Don't want to run folks off. But let's suppose that instead of putting this stuff here on this bulletin, you instead put here that Mark Webb's coming and he's a renowned healer. So if you're sick or your friend is sick, your mother, your sister, whoever might be sick, bring them here because the healer has come to town.

Now, please don't get confused here. I am no healer. One of my friends once said, talking about Peter and John at the temple, you know, Peter says to the lame man, silver and gold have I none, but such as I have, give I to thee.

And my friend says Peter knew he had it, and I know I don't. So whatever this gift of healing is, I lay no claim to it, okay? God sometimes heals, sometimes not. But let's suppose, and I would say if you were talking about a crowd, you might just draw one with that kind of claim, with that kind of advertising, because everybody wants to see somebody healed. But let's suppose that all of a sudden we're sitting here this morning and those doors fly open and here come the emergency room people in here rolling somebody on a gurney down the aisle, parked them right down here in front of me. And they look at me and say, okay, healer, do your thing, which is easier to say.

I would submit to you in that case, man, thy sins are forgiven you. Because who can tell? Who will know? Does he look any different if his sins are forgiven or if they're not?

Is there any outward visible thing you see? No, of course not. But if I say man, take up thy bed and walk and he just lays there on that gurney, everybody knows that I don't have this power, this gift.

You get the picture? So on the one hand, it's easier to say, thy sins be forgiven, unless he really has the power to forgive sins. And then it becomes this is the most difficult thing to say. This is the greatest thing to say. This addresses the true need of the man. And Jesus understanding all of this says, okay, I realize you can't see anything. You don't know if it's actually happened or not. So that you'll know that I have power on earth to forgive sins.

Man, take up thy bed and walk and up he pops. You see, Jesus is saying, I'll give you the visible miracle that you may know that I have power to do the invisible thing, the real thing, the real miracle. This is a confirmation that I can do exactly as I say and that I standing here in God's stead as God have power to forgive man's sins. All right, let's talk about this just a minute.

Do you realize the uniqueness of what's going on here? We have the ministry of the prophets in the Old Testament that did some miraculous things. You say, well, yeah, but Jesus, he raised Lazarus from the dead.

Well, guess what? Elijah raised from the dead. Elijah raised from the dead.

That's not unique. You say, he fed 5,000 people with five loaves. Well, we have a miracle where Elijah takes 10 loaves and feeds 100 prophets up in a cave back in the Old Testament. Same sort of miracle. We have miracles of healings done by the hands of the prophets. But one thing I notice, you'll never find in the ministry of the prophets them saying, man, thy sins are forgiven you. They do not claim that authority. This is unique to this man.

No one else ever will utter those words. So it stands out as a special unique situation. Also notice the principle that the visible here, the visible miracle, the outward healing is simply the confirmation of the big one.

That the big one is the one you can't see. And this is seen all the way through the gospel testimony, especially in John's gospel where we have the idea of Jesus as the bread. Remember they followed him across the sea because he fed them with the loaves. And they get over there and he's trying to turn them to what he calls the true bread. The real stuff, the real deal is not this bread that perishes. It's this bread that comes down from heaven. They're saying, we want you to do what Moses did. Moses gave them bread to eat. We want you to give us bread to eat. And he's saying, wait a minute. You want me to call down bread from heaven?

Already happened. The true bread is he who came down from heaven. I'm that bread, do you see?

The bread of life. You want to talk about resurrection. You do realize that Lazarus died eventually again. I hadn't seen him walking around town, have you? Yes, there was a physical resurrection of Lazarus from death to life, but what this is showing is something even more important behind the scenes of a spiritual life that they who believe on Christ will never die, have not just a temporal physical life but have everlasting life with God.

Do you see how the physical is used? I have an old friend, he was sort of a mentor to me, E.W. Johnson. I doubt many of you have ever heard his name. But quiet in mind, pastored for many years over in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, had a great impact on my ministry in my early years. Brother Johnson, he was quoting some of the older men that he had grown up with, and he said there was a saying among them that the parables of Jesus are miracles of wisdom. And the miracles of Jesus are parables of wisdom. Let me say that again.

I probably said it backwards. The parables of our Lord are miracles of wisdom, and the miracles of our Lord are parables of wisdom. In other words, what he's saying is these miracles aren't just done as a stunt.

They're done to teach you something, and they're done to teach you what is man's real need. And it's not the seen, it's the unseen. And that leads me to another reason why I think this might just be the greatest of his miracles, is because it was the most costly of his miracles. There's a strange thing going on in Christ's ministry that we often forget, that though he is God in the flesh, he's not operating, can I put it this way, in the God mode. He's operating in the man mode, a man who is in total dependence upon his God.

He's not walking around immune. I mean God doesn't suffer. God doesn't feel the heat. He doesn't feel pain. I mean you throw rocks at God all day long, he'll never say ouch.

You get the picture? Jesus is not operating in that mode. When it talks about the kenosis of him emptying himself, I don't believe he emptied himself of divine attribute.

I don't believe you can. If you're God, you can't quit being God, and those attributes are connected to what we call divinity, the divine nature. But he can surrender the independent activation or use of those attributes, and I believe that's exactly what we see going on, that Christ is not functioning like God would function, the omnipotent God doing this and that. He's functioning as a man in total reliance upon the power of his Father.

You see it here in our text, don't you? What does this mean in verse 17, that the power of the Lord was present for him to heal them? Although as God, he can heal anybody he wants to anytime he wants to, but as a man in dependence upon his Father, he does only those things the Father shows him to do, and he does it by the power that his Father gives him to do it, you see? Do you remember the woman with the issue of blood comes up in the crowd, do you remember everybody's crowding around him, and she touches him and the hemorrhage is immediately healed, and Jesus stops and says, who touched me? And his disciples, are you nuts?

Everybody's, you know, your people are thronging you. What do you mean, who touched me? And he says, no, I felt virtue or power flow out of me. In other words, I had a tract by a guy, I won't even tell you his name, it was so ridiculous, but this guy's tract was talking about the power of placebos. And he said, we see the placebo effect in this miracle of this woman's healing because she believed that by touching the hem of his garment, she would be healed. And so by the placebo effect, when she touched his garment, she was healed.

Utterly ridiculous. And the text itself has Jesus saying, who touched me? I felt power flowing out of me. The ministry of Christ drained him in some way.

I don't understand it completely, but that's why we often see him having to leave the crowds and go by himself to get recharged as it were. Because again, he's ministering as a man in total dependence upon his father, upon his father's power. But when it comes to this miracle, what is necessary for this miracle to be performed?

Is it a matter of just uttering the words, man, thy sins are forgiven you? That as we understand the whole picture, the only way I can think of for sin, we have this little debate going on right now in the political realm about forgiveness of student loan. You all heard about that?

Has the news of that reached North Carolina yet? Now, whichever side of that issue you might find yourself on, it has been pointed out and quite correctly that you just can't forgive a loan like that. Now, what you're really doing in the forgiveness of these loans is transferring the loan. The loan doesn't disappear.

It just is removed from one party to the other party, right? Somebody's got to pay it. My friends, that's the problem with sin. Somebody has to pay it. This is an offense to God Almighty. It's a breaking of God's law. Justice demands payment.

Somebody's got to pay. And for Jesus to say to this man, man, thy sins are forgiven, the only way I can see that's going to work, if he himself is willing to bear that man's debt, that man's sin, right? Is there forgiveness anywhere else other than the blood of Jesus? Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin. That this is that costly miracle to Christ himself that will force him to go to Calvary's cross and hang there and suffer for his people to pay a price, a satisfaction for our debts, our sin.

Not only is this one the most costly, but it's also the one that's the most needful for you and me. Say, Brother Mark, you know my arthritis is acting up today. I sure wish the Lord had healed me. Well, I feel sorry for you. I've got some of that going on myself, but that's not your real need. You see, your real need is not your sickness. Your real need is not your poverty.

Your real need is not your unhappiness. You may be sick, but your sickness won't send you to hell. You may be poor, but your poverty won't put you in hell. You may be unhappy, but your unhappiness won't put you in hell. Sin is what will put you in hell.

It is your greatest need to have these words said to you, Thy sins are forgiven. My friend Don McKinney, some of you all may have known Don. He was on a tour over in Israel. You always have to have an Israeli guide go with you, usually a Jewish guy. And he said on their trip, this guy is talking to them while they're on the bus, and he's got the loudspeaker thing, and he's telling them, and he said, Now, when Messiah comes, this is going to happen. When Messiah comes, this is going to happen. Finally, my friend Don, he just had enough of it, and the next time he says this, Don speaks up and says, Then when Messiah comes again, and this guy stopped and sort of chuckled, and he says, Well, you know, you Christians have your Messiah.

We Jews, we have our Messiah. And Don very astutely speaks up and says, Yes, but Jesus said, If you believe not that I am He, you shall die in your sins. You see, that's the greatest need, and that's the need that Jesus came to need.

And so not only is this the most needful thing in life, the most needful miracle to be performed, may I say it's the available miracle. I haven't mentioned it in going through our text, but did you notice the prominence of faith here in verse 20? When he saw their faith, the plural. Some have said, Well, it wasn't the man on the bed's faith, it was the men bringing him in the bed. Well, it was their faith and I believe it's the whole bunch, the whole kit and caboodle, as we say.

All of them. How do you see their faith? It wasn't in anything they verbalized, but it's in their actions that these men are desperate to send their friend to Jesus.

They're not going to let anything stop them, the crowd, the roof. They're going to get to Jesus. There is a demonstration of their faith that this man can do what no other can do. And notice how faith shifts the issue. It's no longer a matter of whether the man himself has power to walk, or whether Jesus has the power to make him walk. It's now up to Christ. The power is in him, not in them. That's what faith does.

It turns the table. It puts the monkey on Jesus' back. And it is faith that Jesus invariably responds to. It may be little.

It may be weak. But when you see men coming to Christ in faith without exception, he responds to their need. Because you see this miracle, the one that you and I need the most to avoid hell, to make heaven, is a miracle that from Christ's own words we have a promise that if we come to Him, John 3.16, the most obvious place probably, if you believe on Him, you have everlasting life.

Now, I know some of you theologians who say, wait a minute, we're Calvinists here. We believe God has an elect, and how can I just assume that I can go to Jesus? Hadn't I better figure out if I'm the elect first? And if I'm not the elect, He's not going to do anything for me. Listen to His words in John 6 in verse 37. All that the Father gives Me shall come to Me. That's election. And Him that cometh to Me I will in no eyes cast out.

In the same breath. He has no problem with those two things together. And you say, well, I just don't see how He can save me if I'm not the elect. That's not your problem. He is the one who says whosoever believes on Him.

That's His problem to work out. You got the wrong end of the shotgun. You need to look at your responsibility, and that is to flee to Christ, to fall before Him. Come empty. You sang earlier the choir, beautiful rendition of Rock of Ages. Nothing in My hands I bring simply to Thy cross I cling. If you're without Christ, if you have never experienced this miracle, in My mind, number one, now if you disagree, you're not going to go to heaven or hell because you're right or wrong on that question.

You understand? But you see why I look at it and say I don't find any miracle greater than this one in Christ's miracle because it's the one you and I so desperately need to be purged of our sin, washed of our sin and our guilt in the precious blood of Jesus. I hope you, I assume that most of you here this morning are Christians or saints, and you've been walking with Christ for many, many years, and you say, well, Brother Mark, do I really need to hear this stuff again?

Well, you're probably not going to hear anything new from me this whole week. I'm just preaching that old, old story. And I find that that old song we used to sing is true that I tell it to those who know it best for they seem hungering and thirsting to hear it like the rest. You ever get tired of talking about your marriage, your wedding?

That happened many, many years ago in some of our cases. We were sitting with some newlyweds just last night listening to their story. But we keep telling that story over and over again. So it is with the believer that this is what floats our boat. This is why we're here. We are here to worship and adore God through His Son, Jesus Christ. But if you're without Christ, if you're lost, if your sins have never been forgiven, oh, I urge you, I plead with you, come to Christ, flee to Him. You've got to tear through a ceiling to get to Him. Whatever you've got to do, get to Jesus. Seek Him, seek Him until you find Him, until your heart is filled with joy because this great Jesus has forgiven your sins. Let's pray. Father, we give You thanks for what You've done in our hearts and lives through the blood of Your Son, purging us not because the debt was simply dissolved, vanished, but because another went and paid what we owed in His own blood, paid it in full so that Your justice is satisfied and Your mercy flows free.

Thank You that You would do such a thing for us. We notice here that Jesus did not ask the man to qualify himself. How many times he'd been to synagogue, how much tithes he had given. He saw the need. He saw their faith. And He responded. Thank You, Father, for a Savior like that, for that's the one we need. Open our eyes to Him that we might rejoice in His beauty, for it's the name of Jesus I pray. Amen.