It's a word that you use again and again, and it maybe has more shaping power in your life than you would think. It's the word, 'need.' If you were going to make a list of the things that you think you need, what would be on your list this evening? Maybe 'need' is one of the sloppiest words used in human culture. Could it be that the vast majority of things that we're convinced we need we don't actually need? If you're a parent, you know that. Your children very seldom would ever say to you these words, "Mom and Dad, I sort of, kind of, desire a pair of shoes."
I Neeeeeed a Pair of Shoes
You've never heard that! Your child will say, "I 'neeeeeeed' a pair of shoes!" You look down at them and you see leather encased feet. It's not actually a need, but they're convinced it's a need, and they will begin to evaluate the degree of your parental love and willingness to provide by your willingness to meet that need. If you're convinced something is a need, you think you're entitled to it; you think it's your right to demand it; and you will judge the love of others by that. When it comes to need, the Gospel is counterintuitive.
The Gospel is countercultural; it confronts our sense of need. I would like you to look in your 'Order of Worship' there to that Mark 2 passage. Mark 1 has been an introduction to the person of Christ and an introduction to the character of Christ's ministry. His zeal was to preach the Gospel of the Kingdom, the Good News of the Kingdom. And He would demonstrate His power and authority by miracles. But He didn't come primarily to be a miracle worker, but to preach that Good News. Now, we hit the second section of the Gospel of Mark; that's Mark, Chapter 2 through 3:6; and what you have, in that passage of Scripture, are five "controversy narratives".
The controversy surrounding Christ is beginning to grow because Christ's claims about Himself, and His authority, and His personhood are becoming clearer and clearer, and the controversy begins to build. And you see the first of those narratives in the passage that we're looking at this evening. Notice what's happened; Jesus has come quietly back into Capernaum, and He's there at home, doing what He had zeal to do. He's with this crowd; so many people gathered in the room that there's no more room for anyone to get in; you can't even get through the door at all.
And what Jesus is doing is preaching; He's preaching the Word to them. Probably if we look at His other sermons, although we're not told what this sermon is, Jesus is connecting His person and work to those many, many prophetic passages in the Old Testament, continuing to say, "I'm the one that the Old Testament spoke of; I'm the fulfillment of all these prophecies in these Scriptures that you know." And as Jesus is preaching, there are these men who have brought a paralyzed friend to the scene. As would often happen, when the crowd would realize where Jesus was, they would pursue Christ so that somehow, some way, they could benefit from His miracle power.
And these men couldn't get their paralyzed friend close to Christ. And you all know the story well; it's a famous story in Sunday School. They do this amazing thing; they dismantle the roof and let this guy down so he's there smack dab in front of Jesus. It probably wasn't a concrete block roof, probably wasn't a roof like we're used to, probably some kind of flat thatched roof with mud over it, and so they were able to dismantle it. Notice what it says as they do that; it says that Jesus saw their faith.
I really do love the example of these men. It's as if they are in this little vignette in Mark as a living example of what faith is and what faith does. And Jesus responds to their faith. In fact, you can almost hear, as you watch these men operate, the words of Hebrews 11:6. Hebrews 11:6 says that, "Without faith it's impossible to please God, because those who come to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him." And there is there a real picture of faith. Faith, first, is rooted in truth; it's rooted in God's declaration of who He is; it's rooted in the truths of the Gospel.
Faith Is Not a Leap in the Dark
Faith is not some kind of religious leap in the dark; it's rooted in truth, but it's not just that. It's important to say that faith is never just theological; faith is never just conceptual; faith is never just mental assent to something. Faith is always action. It's always a way of living; it's always a lifestyle; it's always an approach to life. Faith will not just change the way you think; faith will always change the way you act. And you see that in these guys, because they really did believe that Jesus had the power that He declared He had; they would not relent; they would not stop; they were actually driven to do something radical to get this man in front of Jesus.
And that points us to something that I think is very important for you to consider. Faith, if it's really faith, does not wilt in the face of obstacles. Faith doesn't give up in the face of difficulties. Faith doesn't run away when things are hard. Faith doesn't quit, doesn't give up, doesn't give way to doubt, doesn't walk away in the face of the unexpected and the difficult. And I would ask you this evening, "What happens when you face obstacles; when you face hard things; when the life of faith isn't easy; when you're receiving opposition or life is difficult or you're not sure what God is doing; when you're suffering in some way, what happens to your faith?
Do you revisit your habits? Do you begin to flag in your personal devotions? Do you begin to revisit questions of God's love?" Oh, that God would give us this kind of faith, that we would not only believe the truths of the Gospel, but those truths would be formative of the way we live so that I can say that I'm doing what I'm doing at my university because I believe in God. I'm doing what I'm doing as a husband toward my wife because I believe in God. I'm doing what I'm doing as a wife toward my husband because I believe in God.
I'm doing what I'm doing toward my children because I believe in God. I'm doing what I'm doing with my finances because I believe in God. I'm doing what I'm doing with my leisure because I believe in God. I'm living the way that I live because I really do believe that God is, and He rewards those who seek Him. And that is formative of everything in my life. I wish I could say to you that that's formative of everything in my life, but it's not. I wish I could say to you that everything I do, and everything I think, and everything I desire is an expression of Gospel-rooted faith, but it's not.
And so I would pray this prayer, and I would encourage you to pray this prayer, "Lord, I believe; help my unbelief. Meet me in Your grace so that all that I do, and all that I say, and all that I think, and all that I feel in all the situations, all the locations, all the circumstances of my life would be rooted in the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. That wouldn't be just Sunday morning for me, or Sunday night, or a Bible study, or an episodic moment of ministry. That would be the driving enthusiasm and motivation and passion of my life.
May it not just be information; may it be transformation." But that's not what's radical about this account. That's important, but we're about to get radical, so fasten your seatbelts. Jesus observes their faith, and then what He does next demands attention. Now imagine the crowd; they're sitting watching Jesus teach, and these men rise up in the middle of the message and begin dismantling the roof. This is an amazing scene! And they drop this man down on this bed, who cannot get out of the bed because he's paralyzed.
Now I would propose to you that everybody looking at this man and Christ now, let's say standing next to Him...they would think, "We know exactly next what Christ is going to do." Because doesn't it seem obvious that the biggest need in this guy's life is for healing? You would think that's exactly what Christ would be thinking, but it's not. Jesus gets up and He says, "My son, your sins are forgiven." What? As Jesus looks at this man, His eyes not only see the horror of his paralysis, and this is Lord Creator; He hates all of the effects of the fall because that paralysis would not exist without the horror of sin and what sin has done to the created world.
A Deeper Brokenness
The Creator hates all of those effects. But as He looks at this man, there's something He hates more. There's a deeper issue in this man; there's a deeper brokenness; there's a deeper effect of sin, and that's where the eyes of Christ go, and that's where the heart of Christ goes because He looks at this man, and He's been ravaged by something more than disease; he's been ravaged by sin! And the compassion of Christ goes deeper than just his physical condition. The compassion of Christ goes to this horrible thing because He's looking at a man who now is guilty before God.
He's looking at a man who is now living in the horror of separation from God--what a horrible thing that a human being would ever live separate from God because we were made to live with Him and for Him forever. That separation is a horror; that He would look at this man and as this man is marching, even in his paralysis, toward damnation because he's condemned. And He would look at this man, and He would see in Him, like his paralysis, utter inability; because for all of the horror of the condition, this man has no ability whatsoever to remove his own sin.
And the heart of Christ runs out toward this thing. This vignette is so important for us in our personal lives. It's so important for us for ministry to others because it's so easy to begin to believe that my greatest problem in life exists somewhere outside of me and not inside of me. And brothers and sisters, that's a horrible deceit. That's a deceit of the enemy, and it will lead you away from the Gospel of grace because grace is only ever exciting to sinners. You will have a lot of material to work with because you do live around flawed people, and sometimes those people are flawed enough they seem like your biggest problem.
You live in a fallen world where things are broken and do not operate the way they were meant to operate. There is injustice and there is disease. There is suffering, but the Gospel would declare this fundamentally humbling truth: no matter what I face in the brokenness of the world, my greatest problem exists inside of me, and not outside of me, and the Bible names it - sin! And the Bible uses those evocative words: iniquity, which pictures moral uncleanness. It's not just that I do wrong things.
I'm morally unclean. Transgression, which is the highhanded sin, it's that drive that's inside of me to willingly step over God's boundaries, not that I don't know the boundaries; I see the boundaries, and I step over them. Sin, which is my inability to rise to God's standard, is pulling back the bow, and the arrow falls short of the target every time. Do you value-rate 'need' the way your Savior does? If we're going to incarnate the Lord in our culture, of course we're going to be involved in medicine enterprises, and educational enterprises, and justice enterprises, and economic assistance enterprises, but we must keep this thing at the core: the deepest need of a human being is not for medicine.
The deepest need of a human being is not for education. The deepest need of a human being is not for justice. The deepest need of a human being is not for financial assistance. The deepest need of every person who has ever breathed is grace; forgiving, empowering, delivering grace. And we must live that reality in our everyday lives. Listen, if you believe that, you will not just be a casual consumer of the programs of the church. You'll want to move to any place you can move to hear the Gospel of grace again.
A Student of God's Word
You'll be a student of God's Word. You'll love the fellowship of God's people. You'll love worship. You'll love preaching. You'll pursue the means of grace everywhere you can. And you'll want to be part of ministry that always remembers in all of those good works that we should be involved in, to keep the Gospel of Jesus Christ central. I said this already, but I'll say it again: when you're outside those doors, transformation of the culture around us won't happen by education and those kinds of things.
That transformation will only happen as the hearts of individuals are transformed by grace. We must keep our priorities. Now what Jesus said in those powerful words that He has the authority to say, "My son, your sins are forgiven," immediately creates controversy. There are scribes in the room; these are experts in the law; these are theologians, and perhaps they're there, although we don't know that, already to check Christ out. We know that these men followed Christ around. We know that they were want to try to ask Christ trick questions, and this moment provides for them, confronts them, with a theological problem.
If they are experts in the Scripture, they know a couple things. They first of all know that all sin is against God. Every sin, no matter how horizontal it seems, has verticality to it. And the corollary to that is they know that only God has the authority to forgive sin. So, this One who has stood up and declared forgiveness is either God, or He is a horrible blasphemer. There's no way you can know the things that these men knew and be neutral about this moment. You will have to come down on one side or the other.
And in a rather quiet demonstration of His Messiah-ship, Jesus can read these guys' hearts. Don't try that at home because you do not have that ability, and you should not try to read people's motives and read their thoughts. You don't have that ability; that's messianic ability. And you have Mark's first little window into the heart here. I wish we had time just to unpack this moment. There's a theology of the heart that gets developed in Mark, and it reaches a crescendo in Mark 7 where Christ teaches just very, very important truths about the heart.
And what you see here is literally the way every human being operates. You don't operate by instinct. Contrary to our culture, you're not just a biochemical machine, you have a heart. That word is discussed in somewhere between nine-hundred and a thousand passages of Scripture. It's one of the most well-developed themes in all Scripture. And if you could take all of those passages and put them together, the word 'heart' really could be defined as 'the causal core of your personhood.' That's what the heart is.
The heart is the seat of your thoughts, and the seat of your desires, and the seat of your emotions, and the seat of your motivations. And so, your heart is always active. Whatever situation and relationship you're in, the heart, with its thoughts and desires, is interacting with that. And you don't actually live life based on the facts of your experience; but because you're an active interpreter, you live life based on your interpretation of the facts. So these men are bringing the particular lens of their hearts to this moment; that's the way every human being operates.
That's why the Bible says that a life flows out of the heart. That's why the Bible says, "It's out of the heart that the mouth speaks." That's why the Bible says that what rules the heart will control your words and behavior. And Mark, through the words of Christ, is going to say a lot more about that. And so what Jesus does is He confronts the hearts of these men. He knows what they're thinking. They're thinking, "What in the world is this man saying? No one can forgive sins but God." And Christ asked them this confrontational question, "Why do you question these things in your heart?"
Which Is Easier?
And then He says this, "Which is easier to say to the paralytic, 'Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, 'Rise, take up your bed and walk?'" Well, you could argue that since only God can forgive sins, it is actually easier to say, "Rise up and take up your bed and walk." But that's not what Jesus is going after. What He's saying is, "You obviously are questioning my ability to do this, and so I'm going to present to you empirical evidence of my Messiah-ship of the fact that I'm God that you will not be able to question."
That's what He's doing. He is confronting their doubt and saying, "I will give you evidence of who I am that can not be questioned," and He looks at the man and He says, "Get up; take your bed, and get out of here." Wow! Now notice, I think this is important, how Jesus is employing this miracle. He's actually using the miracle as a means of grace. This miracle surely is an expression of His compassion, but it's more than that. It is meant to be a physical demonstration that points to His identity so that it would draw out of the people who were there, faith.
That's how it's functioning. In fact, the word that John uses all throughout the Gospel of John for miracles is the word 'signs,' (åî?????) ... that the miracle is actually a sign that points to the identity of Jesus and to the reality of the Gospel. And notice the result. The man rose; he went out before them, and the crowd was amazed. They glorify God and say, "We have never seen anything like this." Who is like our God? Who has the ability to reach into the morass of all that sin has left us with and reach in to the deepest recesses of its destructiveness and cleanse you at the core of your personhood?
In announcing forgiveness, Jesus is announcing also the coming cross. I love the way Paul talks about this in Colossians 2: And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, (Listen to this.) by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.
(ESV) May we humbly say with the Gospel, "Yes there are things that I suffer in this broken world; there are obstacles and difficulties and pains that are the result of the brokenness of the fall, but I would confess humbly that my deepest, fullest dilemma is inside of me and not outside of me; (Are you ready for this?) and for this, I have Jesus!" That's the Gospel. And when you move away from that, two things happen: You quit being a consumer after that grace; you quit being enthusiastic about it for yourself and for others.
May God help us to have our priorities right, our sense of need rooted in the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Let's Pray: Thank you for this beautiful little narrative, twelve little verses, that confront us with our need and encourage us with Your saving power. May we humbly confess that the diagnostic of the Gospel is right; that sin is our greatest dilemma; and that the cure of the Gospel is the only cure; that Jesus would stand as our substitute; that He would take our offenses on Him, and He would cancel the debt with His shed blood so we could stand before You now, justified, forgiven! Thank you, in Jesus's name, Amen.
