Come And See His Miracles

Once it became clear that Jesus could heal sickness and infirmity, word spread rapidly. One paralyzed man was fortunate in having able-bodied friends who could lower him from an open roof right in front of Jesus.

Their faith, and the subsequent miracle of healing that followed, caused the fame of Jesus to spread even faster. From Chicago, this is The Moody Church Hour, a weekly service of worship and teaching with Pastor Erwin Lutzer. Today we continue our series on Come and See Jesus, pictures of the Savior that teach us about his mission on earth.

Later in our broadcast, Erwin Lutzer will speak on Come and See His Miracles. Pastor Lutzer comes now to open our service. I invite you to take your hymnals and turn to number 89, Our Great Savior Jesus, What a Friend of Sinners. Then also, our scripture reading today is by Pastor Charles Butler, who will be substituting for Pastor Milko. Pastor Butler is our pastor of urban outreach and discipleship, and we'll have an opportunity to participate in that scripture reading.

Then also hymn 88, Be Prepared for That, Fairest Lord Jesus. And the chorus, once we stand to sing, will continue to stand until we have sung, Worthy, you are worthy. Participating with us in the service today, a little later on, is Michael Mays, who's an opera singer. And he and his wife Lauren attend the church here, and we're so glad that they are with us. And Lauren sings also in the Lyric Opera. So we thank God for their talent, and we're looking forward to hearing Michael.

I believe it's the first time he has sung here at The Moody Church. As all of us know, this month is Black History Month. And as a reminder of the contribution that the African American community has made, both to music and to the gospel and its proclamation, we'll be having two spirituals in our service this morning. And our Father, we are gratified today for the gift that you have given us in Jesus. Open our minds and hearts to worship today, we pray, and grant us that great faith by which you can change a city, and you can change us by the power of the cross. Do that, we pray, in Jesus' name. Amen. Singing Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah Singing Jesus, Lord, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Singing Hallelujah Hallelujah, Lord, we pray in Jesus' name.

Amen. Singing Jesus, Lord, we pray in Jesus' name. Jesus, Lord, I have his Son, out of the fields of evil. Even when my heart is breaking, leaving my God prevents my soul. Hallelujah, while I'm singing. Hallelujah, while I'm singing. Hallelujah, while I'm singing. Hallelujah, while I'm singing. Hallelujah, while I'm singing. Hallelujah, while I'm singing. Hallelujah, while I'm singing.

Hallelujah, while I'm singing. Jesus, Lord, I have his Son, out of the fields of evil. Jesus, Lord, I have his Son, out of the fields of evil. Jesus, Lord, I have his Son, out of the fields of evil. Jesus, Lord, I have his Son, out of the fields of evil. Jesus, Lord, I have his Son, out of the fields of evil.

Jesus, Lord, I have his Son, out of the fields of evil. Amen! Hallelujah! Let's continue our worship from Colossians chapter 1, verses 13 through 20 found in your bulletin.

Join me on the bold print. The Father has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created, things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities, all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

And who is this? This is Jesus. When we say come and see Jesus, are we talking about come and see him in the manger?

No, come and see Jesus for all that he is. In fact, of all the things you could say about anything on earth or in the heavens, fairer still is the Lord Jesus Christ. Let's sing that from our hearts, number 88. And then right after that, let's sing, worthy you are worthy, king of kings, Lord of lords, you are worthy. Yes, Lord Jesus, ruler of all nature, hope of God and man of song, he will I cherish, he will I honor, love my soul for he told and found. There are no meadows, there still are no lands, love in the blooming heart of sweet Jesus is heaven, Jesus is the Lord who makes the whole world want to see.

There is the sunshine, there is still the moonlight, and the world we meet, sorry most, Jesus shines brighter, Jesus shines cooler than all the angels have ever known. Jesus is the Lord of all nations, son of God and son of heaven, glory and honor, praise to all the nations, love and honor, glory and honor. You are worthy, you are worthy, you are worthy, in the face, Lord of lords, I will show you. You are holy, you are holy, in the face, Lord of lords, I will show you. Jesus, you are Jesus, you are Jesus, Jesus, you are Jesus, in the face, Lord of lords, I will show you. Jesus, you are Jesus, in the face, Lord of lords, you are Jesus, Jesus, you are Jesus, in the face, Lord of lords, I will show you.

In the face, Lord of lords, I will show you. I believe this is Jesus, come and see, I believe this is Jesus, come and see, light of God shines in his face, he offers all his working grace, come and see, come and see, I believe this is Jesus, come and see, I believe this is Jesus, come and see, I believe this is Jesus, come and see, I believe this is Jesus, come and see, come and see, I believe this is Jesus, come and see. In the morning when I rise, in the morning when I rise, in the morning when I rise, give me Jesus, give me Jesus, give me Jesus, you may have all this work, give me Jesus. Dark midnight was my cry, dark midnight was my cry, dark midnight was my cry, give me Jesus, give me Jesus, you may have all this work, give me Jesus. Oh, when I come to die, oh, when I come to die, give me Jesus, give me Jesus, nobody but Jesus, you may have all this work, give me Jesus. Nobody but Jesus, oh you can have all this work, give me Jesus. Thank you.

I'm getting the impression you like that. Thank you so much, just give me Jesus. At the end of the day when it's time to die, just give me Jesus. We're living in a day, of course, when we are awash with miracles. Everybody's experienced miracles. There's a book on miracles, a course on miracles. You can do your own miracle.

It doesn't matter much whether you believe in Jesus, whatever it is that you believe. As long as you believe in a higher power, we're told out there that we can access the metaphysical world and do our own miracle. So I've read about miracles, how a phantom dog appears out of the fog to guide a family. A miracle of silent hitchhiker leads doctor to a school bus.

Trucker driving along hears something over the radio, but he does not have a CB radio. He's just, but the message still comes and he has to go to a family to help. But we live in a time of miracles. In fact, everyone can be touched by a miracle, touched by an angel.

It doesn't matter what you believe. The miracles in the New Testament were very different than that. Jesus did miracles, but first of all, he did verifiable miracles. Almost always, his miracles were done in the presence of other people who could check it out to see whether or not it was really happening.

He loved to take people whom the whole community knew were paralytics or blind and heal those kinds of people. Those miracles are a little tougher to do than some of the others. Second thing is that Jesus always was using his miracles as a teaching point. They always illustrated something other than just the physical healing.

And that most assuredly is true in our story today. You know that this is a series of messages titled Come and See Jesus, and today, Come and See His Miracles. Well, we're only going to talk about one miracle. It's in the ninth chapter of the book of Matthew, but before you turn there, we're actually going to use Mark's account of the miracle in Mark chapter 2. Same story, except that Mark adds some details that Matthew doesn't. Both are accurate, but in this instance, Mark gives us more details.

Mark chapter 2. In that culture, if you left your door open, people could stop by. It was like a welcome mat, stop by. So here, Jesus is in Capernaum, and he's in the house at home, the text says, and it could be that this is Peter's house. If you've ever been to Capernaum, as some of us have, you know that the synagogue is there, and then also tradition says that Peter's house is close by, and it may or may not be authentic, but we can visualize it happening there. Jesus is in the house, he's in the living room, and people gather around him, many people, and soon the door is so crowded, and people are hanging onto his every word, even on the other side of the door.

They're straining to see whether or not they can hear. And in the midst of this, something happens that really is this story. And it's a remarkable story, because the man was a paralytic, that is to say, paralysis, maybe a quadriplegic. One thing is sure, he's not able to bring himself to Jesus. He is too helpless to do that, to bring himself to Jesus.

And so four men come up with an idea, and you'll notice what it is. Verse 2, and many were gathered together so that there was no more room, not even at the door, and he was preaching the word to them. Wouldn't you like it if we had a tape recorder and could have picked up what Jesus preached?

That would be marvelous indeed, though we have some indications by other texts. Verse 3, 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 from above him. And when they had made an opening, they let down the bed on which the paralytic lay.

Oh, wow. What I want you to do is to take three snapshots today, if you have your cameras. Take three snapshots of this incident, which I will describe and I want you to visualize. The first is what the men did. What did the men do? I mean, these were men, I think, first of all who had a vision because they knew that they wanted to get this man to Jesus and they had to figure out how to get people to Jesus who don't have the strength or the ability to get to there on their own. So they said it's up to us to know how to get him to Jesus. Now, I used to, when I was a child, I'd read this passage and I would visualize somebody running to get a ladder to climb on the roof.

Probably not. In those days, the roof was flat and there was a stairway that went up to the roof because people would do various things up there. I mean, they could not only get some sun, they could bathe, they could do some things on the flat roof of their house. And so the roof was there and probably the stairs were already there and they thought to themselves, what we're going to do is we're going to climb up the stairs and we are going to get this man to Jesus. Now, if somebody opened the roof of your house, you may be very unhappy at the wise idea.

But again, context and history. In those days, the roofs were made primarily of clay and grass, which of course hardened. And then they would have laths or beams across the roof and those beams went all the way to the walls. So you have like a box structure that was strong and supportive. But the roof itself, as it hung onto these beams, the roof itself was this clay and this grass.

So it doesn't take too much imagination to know that it wasn't really that difficult. They began to dig through the roof and then they took this man and these beams, by the way, were about three feet across. And so you can imagine that they take this cot and somehow they lower it and by that time they had Jesus Christ's attention, no question. Jesus was looking up and he was seeing what was happening and in some way they got him right in the presence of Jesus.

Talk about vision and creativity and ingenuity in getting somebody where he needs to be but can't get there on his own. Something else about them, they obviously were compassionate. What they said is that if people can't get to Jesus on their own, we're going to help them. We don't know whether this was a friend, possibly, maybe just a complete stranger who was trying to figure out how to get to Jesus.

They thank God for their compassion. David Dykstra died of cancer at the age of 54. David Dykstra is the father-in-law to our daughter. He's Ben's dad, who is now in heaven. That is, David is in heaven. The age of 54, when he got cancer and was told he had between six and nine months to live, he spoke to his congregation, a small church, and said, now, all of you are going to wonder how you can help me.

They always have that question, you know, well, you know, you have cancer, how can we help? He said, one thing you can do, and this was his story. He loved this story in Mark chapter 2. He said, there are going to be times when I can't bring myself to Jesus. There are going to be times when I'm too weak to be brought to him, and you're going to have to carry me.

And in order to carry me, send me verses of Scripture that you are using in your prayer time on my behalf. What a marvelous way to be remembered and to seek help. But David saw something else in this text, which we should not miss. You'll notice it says in verse 5, and when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, my son, your sins are forgiven. And so David said, when there are times when I can no longer believe for myself, would you believe for me in your faith and in your prayers and in your help? And he died a death of suffering, but a victorious death.

And he is now in the presence of our Lord, whom we love, and someday we shall be with him. But the point is, we need one another. There are times when we can no longer believe for ourselves. The waters rush over us.

The difficulties are so severe. There are times when other people have to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves, and they need to be the ones to go to Jesus on our behalf and to believe for us and to trust for us. This morning here at the church, I met a woman whom I've not met before, but she told me how much she prays for the church and for our ministry.

And I thought, how marvelous that a woman whose name I did not know has the gift of intercession, because there are times when we don't have the faith. Somebody has to come along and carry us to Jesus. Do you have a clear picture in your mind of what the men did? Now let's move on to what Jesus said.

OK, this man suddenly is right in his presence. It says in verse 5, Jesus saw their faith and said to the paralytic, my son, your sins are forgiven. Does that surprise you that that's what happened? It certainly surprises me when I read it, because I'm thinking, you know, he maybe didn't come for forgiveness. He was coming to be healed. He was paralyzed.

I mean, after all, he wanted to walk again. And Jesus said, your sins are forgiven. Now you have to understand that in the Old Testament times, there was a belief that there is a tight relationship between sin and sickness. That's why in the book of Job, you know, when Job had his life totally come unraveled, you know, his three friends, put friends in quotes, they gathered together and they kept saying, what sin have you committed? Cough it up, Job.

Come on, tell us now. And Job keeps justifying himself and they become angry and by the time they're finished, they aren't friends anymore. Because they believe that if you're sick, there's some sin that you committed. And so there's a tight relationship. In the Old Testament, it was believed that there was a tight relationship. So you can see here what Jesus is doing.

The logic. Jesus is saying, in effect, on your own premises, this man cannot be healed unless he is forgiven first. If sin caused his sickness, then he must be forgiven before I can heal him. Could I say as a parenthesis that in the New Testament, you find that there isn't a tight relationship between sin and sickness. There is a relationship, but it's not tight. And could I say that it is really not up to us. It is really mean for you to look at somebody who's going through some physical calamity and to look at them and say, it is because of your sin.

Sin in your life. Could I say this? I asked that question, but of course I'm going to say it.

I'm not looking for your permission. Say whatever you want. Thank God. Thank God. That's right.

I always like the front benches, not the back benches, not the back benches. Some of the most holy people I know have suffered the most. So you be careful. You be careful here. There is not a tight relationship.

All sickness is because of sin, but it's not a one-on-one correspondence. Now, sitting there and seeing this and hearing these words are the scribes. They're sitting there. Should they be there?

Absolutely. They were the gatekeepers of Israel. They should check Jesus out.

They had a responsibility to check teachers out to make sure that they were teaching the right thing and so forth. Their problem was they were really reticent to grant Jesus what seems obvious to us. So the scribes are sitting there and they're saying to themselves, why does this man speak like that? He is blaspheming. Who can forgive sins but God alone? They say, this is blasphemy. Because when Jesus said to him, son, your sins are forgiven, it almost sounds as if Jesus was saying, I'm forgiving your sins. He's not simply declaring that God in heaven has forgiven sins, but he's saying more than that. He seems to imply that he has the right to speak and sins are forgiven. And they said, this is blasphemy.

And Leviticus chapter 24 says that if you blaspheme God, you should be stoned. So you can imagine what's going on in their minds here. Jesus picks up on this and verse 8, immediately he's perceiving in his spirit that they thus questioned within themselves. Did he use here his divine knowledge or was it an intuition?

In the scripture sometimes you see Jesus exercising both. But he knows in their hearts that this is what they are saying. So he has a question for them.

Another parenthesis, you're getting lots of parentheses today. Jesus is recorded in the New Testament as having asked more than 100 questions. He was always asking questions. One of the best ways to teach somebody is question, question, question, question, question, because you make them think. So Jesus is asking them, why do you question these things in your hearts?

Now, here's my question for you. Which is it easier to say to the paralytic, your sins are forgiven, or to say rise and take up your bed and walk? Which is it easier to say? How many of you think that it is easier to say, rise, take up your bed, and walk? How many of you say it's easier to say your sins be forgiven?

How many of you are not with me at all in this? Time to think, folks, time to think. It is, let me begin by saying that to forgive sins and to heal a paralytic, both of those are impossible. I can't do either. And when you're in the realm of impossibility, it doesn't really matter how big the impossibility is.

It's just impossible. But what Jesus is trying to get them to see is this. It is easier to say, your sins be forgiven, because talk is cheap, and you can't prove whether the sins have been forgiven or not. When you have somebody whose sins are forgiven, if you lead them to the Lord, you don't notice these sins just float through the window. You say, oh, you know, I led somebody to Christ and he had so many sins, you should have seen them all when they left.

No. Anybody can say to you, your sins are forgiven, because it is non-verifiable. But to say rise and take up your pallet and walk for somebody who has been a quadriplegic for the last 10 or 15 years.

Now that, that you had better produce if you say that, or else you'll be seen to be a fake, which you'd be. Now let's follow Jesus' logic a little bit more here. Jesus goes on to say that you might know that the Son of Man have power on Earth to forgive sins. I say to you, rise, take up your bed, and walk.

Now hang on to that. What Jesus is saying is, on the basis of your own logic, because you are saying that this person cannot be healed, unless he is first forgiven, if I heal him, that proves that he has been forgiven. Because unless he is forgiven, he cannot be healed.

So that you might know that the Son of Man has power on Earth and authority to forgive sins. He says, rise, take up your bed, and walk. And what did this man do? He arose immediately, verse 12, picked up his bed and went out before them all, so that they were all amazed and glorified to God, saying, we never saw anything like this.

And that, by the way, leads us to the third picture. The discussion that Jesus had with the scribes, and then the third picture is, of course, Jesus speaking, and the man is healed. So Jesus is saying, all right, you think that I don't have power to forgive sins. You also think that you can't possibly be healed unless you are forgiven.

I forgave him, and now I heal him. Jesus is saying, in light of the fact that you can see that I can heal him physically, you should believe that I can also heal him spiritually. In light of the fact that I have authority over the material realm, that should give you faith to believe that I have the authority also over the metaphysical realm, where issues of sin and forgiveness and all of these matters come up. And so Jesus was saying to these scribes, if you were thinking clearly, you'd have to come to the conclusion that I am God. They themselves said, who can forgive sins but God alone?

The answer is, nobody can. And Jesus is saying, please realize the logic of your own theology. I am God. I forgave the sins, and I caused a paralytic to walk. Two transforming lessons from this passage. First of all, a lesson for us regarding getting people to Jesus.

We have to be creative to do that, don't we? Here you have four men who figure out, here's somebody who can't help himself. How can I help those who can't help themselves? Bound by the paralysis of sin, incapable of making a rational decision regarding Jesus, how can I get them where they need to be, namely in the presence of Jesus? That's a good question to ask.

And we need to think about that creatively. This past week, a colleague here at the church and I were at the National Religious Broadcasters meeting, and we stopped by a new facility of one of our partners in radio ministry. And the man in charge is 70 years old, but I have never seen anyone with such a nimble mind and such a focused desire to use technology to win people to Christ.

He's on the cutting edge of all technology because he believes that technology has been raised up to share the gospel. So one day, he and his son-in-law were at a computer, and they decided to enter into a chat room. Now, I have to tell you that I have a computer.

I write books on a computer. I have never entered a chat room. I always figure, good night. I don't know what in the world happens in those chat rooms. But what they will do is they'll go into an atheistic chat room, and then they'll type into the computer, of course God is alive.

I talked to him this morning, OK? Immediately, you know, you've got all these emails, all these, I mean, that'll even wake an atheist up. I mean, you know, and they begin dialoguing.

And as these dialogues develop, I guess, I don't know, you can somehow spin off and have a private chat with somebody. And so they end up praying with people and leading them to Christ. He'll go into a room, a chat room of, say, a different religion.

I'll just choose one arbitrarily without naming the one that he gave us. And he'll type into the computer, unless you believe in Jesus Christ, you're going to hell. Everybody wakes up at that point. And you have some people, you know, who get angry, and they get off, but there are others who dialogue. And so his vision is, if you can get this, in his new facility, he pointed us to an area, perhaps I don't know how many he'll have, five or six people, whose full-time job is to enter chat rooms to share the gospel. And I thought to myself, now, you know, that's creativity. That's creativity.

I mean, that's awesome. Because there are people out there who don't know about Jesus, they're not able to make a rational decision about Jesus, and we have to try to figure out, how do we get this person confronted with the only person who can speak him clean and grant him the forgiveness that you and I know he desperately needs? Now, what about you? Maybe it's giving somebody a book, and asking them to read it, and then telling them. You read it, and we'll have a discussion about it later. You know, there are so many different creative ways, and we don't have to do it all in the same way, because what we're saying is, there are people who need to get to Jesus, and they're never going to get there on their own. That's the first lesson. Second lesson is, what we really need at the end of the day is, of course, the miracle of forgiveness. It is a much greater miracle than saying, rise, take up your pallet, and go home. The gift of forgiveness, which Jesus gives us, is a gift that is great. Now, when you watch television, and you see these healing services, and I've watched my share of them, to glean characteristics of false teachers, as you see many of these, what you notice is, everybody's supposed to come forward for a miracle, and everybody's supposed to be healed.

There's never anything, seldom, seldom said about the need for repentance, and forgiveness, and everything. It's just, come one, come all, be healed. We don't care exactly what you believe, and healing is for you.

That's nonsense. It's nonsense, and it's also unbiblical, which makes it nonsense, by the way. And so what you have is this great emphasis on healing, but no emphasis on holiness. What you have is this idea that all these miracles are going to be performed, the power of an evangelist to be able to touch someone and have them collapse on the platform. You've heard me say from this platform that that is not of God. We can show that.

And so what you have is this great emphasis on that. Listen, it is much more important that you be forgiven than that you be healed. And I say that with sensitivity, because it's no fun being sick or being in pain. But there was a young woman, something like Johnny Erickson Tada, who became paralyzed for life, who in that paralysis came to know Christ as Savior, and said it was worth this just to know Jesus.

It's worth this just to know that. It is the contrast, you know, between time and eternity. Time and eternity. Your body can be healed in this life, but the question is your soul forever.

Where will it be? Now listen carefully. One of the things that you and I cannot do is we can't forgive ourselves. Oh yes, there's a sense in which we can say, yeah, you know, I did this and this, and I have to come to terms with what I've done, and so I forgive myself. But ultimately, these scribes were theologically accurate, totally accurate when they said, no one can forgive sin except God alone. You're a postmodern person.

You think that you hold within your heart your future and your fate. I want you to hear me carefully when I say that your sin is sin against God, and only God can speak you clean, and to say your sins are forgiven. What beautiful words for sinners. Now if you're not a sinner, you don't need to hear them. But if you think that you're not, come up to me later, and I'll try to straighten out your theology a little bit, or talk to your wife.

It'll do the same thing. Nietzsche, who died in the year 1900, proclaimed the death of God, and though he lived, obviously, before the time of Hitler and the Holocaust, he in effect predicted it, because he says once God is dead, everything will be permissible. But one thing that he said about God was this. He said, regarding God, we have killed him. He proclaimed the death of God. He said, we have killed him, but then he asked this question, but now who will wipe the blood from our hands? We've done away with God, and if we've done away with God, there's no one to say thy sins be forgiven. I want you to know today that neither Nietzsche nor no one else did away with God.

They only thought so. Today, Jesus, Jesus, who has the power of life and death, can look you in the eye, figuratively speaking, and say to you, thy sins be forgiven. Some of you need desperately to hear those words. Would you bow as we pray? Our Father, we want to thank you today that Jesus could both heal this man physically, but especially we want to thank you that he could heal him spiritually, and that he had authority to say, your sins be forgiven.

Today, I'm speaking to people whose consciences are polluted with moral failure, people whose consciences have a great sense of dullness and emptiness because of sins that plague them. Oh, Father, we pray today, may they hear the words of Jesus. And for those of us who know him as Savior, thank you that we can keep coming to be cleansed, to be forgiven. And we pray that in our culture and in our day, give us the creativity to take this world and bring them to Jesus. Now, what do you have to say to Jesus today in light of this message? Let's just have a moment of silence. You've never received him.

You can receive him right now. Receive his forgiveness. As a Christian, as your heart gone cold, as you've wandered away from him, say, Jesus, I come home today to your forgiveness and love. Father, whatever work you've begun in us, continue it. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Amen. Let's sing two stanzas of 436, whiter than the snow. When Jesus speaks the word, we are whiter than the snow, 436.

That's how clean we can be made in Christ's presence. Let's stand to sing and Jerry will lead us. On today's Moody Church Hour, Pastor Lutzer brought a message on Come and See His Miracles, the fourth of eight pictures of the life of Christ in a series entitled Come and See Jesus. Not everyone was happy with the man from Galilee.

Some saw their influence waning as the crowds sought out Jesus and began plotting to do him in. Next week, join us as Dr. Lutzer speaks on Come and See His Enemies. Our eight-part series on Come and See Jesus can be yours on CD for a gift of any amount to The Moody Church Hour.

Our thank you to you will be a set of eight messages you can hear and then pass on to others. Just call us at 1-800-215-5001. Let us know you'd like to support Moody Church's ministry. Call 1-800-215-5001 or you can write to us at Moody Church Media, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois 60614. Mention the series Come and See Jesus when you write or call. Online, go to moodyoffer.com. That's moodyoffer.com. Join us next time for another Moody Church Hour with Pastor Erwin Lutzer and the Congregation of Historic Moody Church in Chicago.