In Luke 5: 17-42, Jesus touches the life of a paralyzed man, bringing him more than physical healing...but a healing of his soul. To the friends who brought this man to Jesus, he was truly that "...friend who stays closer than a brother" (Proverbs 18: 24). Immediately after this encounter, Jesus touches the life of second man, Levi the despised tax collector, who not only begins following Jesus but invites all his fellow tax collectors to meet him too. How can we, who are Jesus’ disciples, offer such transforming hope to “sinners” like Jesus did? We can begin by being for them what Jesus has been for us…their friends.
We can be friends who simply care. (17-18a) In a typical Middle
Eastern house, there was a large central court that one entered from the
street. Jesus would have been teaching
and healing in this central court. Luke
says in v. 17 that “The power of
the Lord was with Jesus to heal,” and thus a large crowd was pressing into
this central court in order to see him which included many Pharisees and Scribes. Luke makes it clear that early on in his ministry, Jesus experienced the criticism of these religious professionals, the "pastors" and "bible teachers" who were troubled by his message and his methods. The Pharisees, or
“Separated Ones,” advocated a rigorous interpretation of the Law of Moses,
insisting on observance not only of the written
Torah but also the oral Torah
ascribed to Moses that was developed to guard the Law against
violation like a fence. The primary duty of the Scribes
was to study
the Law of Moses, teach it to the people, and even to help settle disputes
involving questions of the Law. With Jesus they shared several common convictions including a passion to see God's kingdom realized, and a firm hope in the resurrection of the dead, but whereas the Pharisees and Scribes sought to hasten this day by the strict observance of Torah, Jesus emphasizes that the Father's mercy and its transforming power is our one true hope.
Into this unusual crowd of desperate souls, curious seekers, and hard-nosed skeptics, (v. 18a) four men are carrying
a man on a stretcher who is paralyzed.
Before we begin talking about how these men took their friend to Jesus, we
shouldn’t miss the fact that they were carrying him, period, and
that it probably wasn’t the first time. They had a history with this man. They cared about him, and their friendship
was genuine. Jesus does not call us to make friends only
for the purpose of sharing the gospel with them, or evangelizing them or curing
them. No, a faithful witness to Jesus is
often first called to be a genuine, faithful friend, period. Sharing our faith with others is a natural
thing when it is built upon a foundation of genuine caring and compassion.
I like the fact that Luke, the Physician,
describes this sick man differently then Matt./Mark who call him simply “the
paralytic.” Luke, in v. 18 uses
the more medically accurate description: “a man who was in a state of paralysis.” If you have
a chronic medical condition as I do, it does not need to define you or your family, but
it does take adjusting to. In "Adjusting to Life with Chronic Illness," Mary Yerkes suggests that we: (1) Educate ourselves about our
condition. (2) Recognize our limits and learn to say no. (3) Build fun into our lives (4) Focus our
physical and emotional resources on those things that matter most. (5) Share our gifts and talents. (6) Accept help from others. Don’t
suffer in silence…and don’t assume other people know what’s going on. To these men (and to God) this person was not
just a medical condition to fix he was a man, a friend they
deeply cared about who happened to have an illness. Friends begin by simply caring. But then…
We can be friends who risk bringing our friends to Jesus. (18b-19,
27-29). Luke tells us that these four men had a plan:
“to bring him in and lay him before Jesus” (18b). But unable to bring
him in through the front door because of the crowd, they got very
creative. They climbed up on top of the
roof, removed some of the roof tiles and lowered him down (19). The point is that
the faith of these men was bold, determined, and unconcerned about consequences.
Their faith was driven by one great desire: to get their friend
to Jesus, to get him to the head of the line, to tear the roof of that house and lower him right into the
middle of the joyous circle of his friends.
The Institute for American Church Growth asked
10,000 people about their Christian pilgrimage. What led them to faith?
Answers: A special need, 2 %; Walking-in, 3 %; Pastor, 6 %; Personal visit with
someone, 1 %; Sunday school, 5 %; An evangelistic crusade, 5 %; A Program, 3 %;
A Friend/relative, 79 %. I was eating at a local market with my family in our area the other day when we ran into two boy from our youth group. They were completely unselfconscious about
the fact that I was their pastor, and even introduced me to one of their friends woh was sitting with them. “Hey Pastor Steve, meet my friend,
he’s an atheist,” he said smiling at him. “I know
quite a few...and some are my friends” I said. It’s nice to meet
you.” Frankly I was impressed that these boys even knew their friend's worldview. It implies that they had engaged in some conversations about faith and doubt, Christianity and secularism. Our Lord can work through
relationships like that…penetrating the darkness of doubt and despair with his
light …and all because of friendship. Personal
relationships are the primary means through which men and women, boys and girls
are introduced to the Living Christ.
We can be friends who know the true Friend of sinners (20-26, 30-31). Notice that these men asked nothing of
Jesus. They simply lowered their friend
down before him with tremendous
faith that He would know what to do. In response to that faith, Jesus does not say, “Your sickness is healed”
but rather, (v. 20) “Friend, your sins are forgiven you!” In John 15:15, Jesus says to his disciples, "I do not call you servants any longer...but I have called you friends..." What this man needed most was to know he was not
the enemy of God but his friend, that he could be forgiven of his
sins and set free from his guilty past.
What this man needed most was to know that God loved him and
forgave him for everything wrong he had done. The most important healing we can receive in this
life, is the healing of our relationship with God.
I was meeting
with my doctor the other day when I saw a colleague of mine sitting in the waiting room. We knew we had the same endocrinologist, but it was the first time we had seen each other in his office at the same time. In the exam room, my doctor pointed out this coincidence to me; and then took the opportunity to say, “There are very few people who do what you guys do;
and I want you to know that I respect what you do, and wish there were more
people like you doing it. It meant a lot that my doctor, who I respect very much, would share that he
highly values my work as a pastor; and that he felt that this work
complimented his own. In truth, minety-five percent of doctors now recognize that there is a powerful connection between our spiritual/psychological state and our physical health (see Dale A. Matthews, M.D., The Faith Factor, New York, NY: Viking Press, 1998). So when Jesus says, “Yours sins are forgiven” he is
reminding us of this powerful connection...that there can only be genuine healing when the separation
occasioned by our sin has been mended through God’s mercy and our repentance. David makes this very point in Psalm 32:
1 Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. 2 Happy are those to whom the Lord imputes no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. 3 While I kept silence, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long. 4 For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. (Selah) 5 Then I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not hide my iniquity; I said, "I will confess my transgressions to the Lord," and you forgave the guilt of my sin. (Selah) 6 Therefore let all who are faithful offer prayer to you; at a time of distress, the rush of mighty waters shall not reach them. 7 You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with glad cries of deliverance. (Selah)
Karl Menninger, the famed psychiatrist, wrote at length about the reality and power of sin in a world that no longer takes sin very seriously (Karl Menninger, Whatever Became of Sin)! Menninger purportedly said, “If I could convince patients in psychiatric hospitals that they were forgiven 75% would walk out the next day.” Before she died, Marghanita Laski, a well
known atheist claimed that, “What I envy most about you Christians is your
forgiveness; I have nobody to forgive me” (John Stott in The Contemporary Christian. Christianity Today, Vol. 38, no. 7). Many of us carry around with us a powerful load of guilt.
The pastors and bible teachers who heard Jesus
pronounce this man’s forgiveness objected because they saw true forgiveness as
something that could only be experienced on the Last Day, when we stand before
God’s judgment seat. So they began mumbling to themselves that this was
blasphemy: "Who is this? Who can forgive
sins but God alone?" (21) And they
were quite right. It was blasphemous if Jesus was just another
man. But if Jesus was and is the incarnation of God who brings the promise of divine forgiveness and new
life from the future into the present, this is not blasphemy, it is a liberating blessing. Therefore Jesus asks, “Which is easier to say? ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or ‘Rise and walk’?
(23) I’m sure they were thinking, "It's easier to say, 'Your sins are
forgiven' because the truth or falsehood of that claim cannot be
verified." But in fact, to be able to say
truthfully, 'Your sins are forgiven, and your relationship with God is
restored' is the harder thing by far.
The cleansing of leprosy is easy, calming of storms simple, the casting out of
demons child’s play compared to this.
As Jesus stands before this man, he demonstrates that he not only has the
divine authority,
but the divine power to do both; and so “he said to
the one who was paralyzed – ‘I say to you, stand up and take your bed and go to
your home’” (24). Notice that Jesus does not simply
say, “Rise and walk” but tells him (even before he is healed) what he should do
after he is healed… "Take up your bed and go to your home!" Such is Jesus confidence and authority over
illness, and over sin. Luke tells us that the man immediately “stood up before them, and took what he had been lying on, and went to
his home” (25)
-- just as Jesus had commanded, and no
doubt his friends were leaping and praising God with him.
Not long afterward, Jesus sees a man seated at a
tax booth, a tax collector despised by his fellow Jews because he profited from
the Roman domination and worked with Gentiles, even on the Sabbath. This was a man who may have been paralyzed by
guilt. I can imagine that
Jesus lovingly challenged him to be just in the way he collected
taxes, no longer stealing from the people, assuring him that he could begin
again, that he could rid himself of the terrible guilt that he carried and the scorn he suffered from his own people. Jesus told him that he could turn back to God, experience his mercy, and begin to use his tremendous resources to bless others. Luke does not recount this conversation but reports that Jesus simply said, “Follow me." And so Luke record that “[Levi] got up” using the same Greek verb that described the man with paralysis after
he was healed. The man got up…not to argue
with Jesus, not to tell Jesus to mind his own business, not
to walk away from Jesus, he got up to follow him, as if to say “Yes Lord, I want to
turn from everything I know is wrong and receive God’s forgiveness. I want to
treat people justly. I want to walk in
the light of God’s truth. I want to experience God’s mercy and be merciful to
others. I want to follow you and learn
from you how to live the eternal kind of life.”
Levi’s heart was so filled
with joy over the experience of God’s forgiveness, and the prospect of a new
life here and now as the friend of Jesus that he threw a great party for Jesus
and invited all his tax collector friends to come and meet him: “Come and spend
an evening with my new Friend, the man who changed my life.” Again, the Pharisees
and scribes were complaining to Jesus’ disciples saying, “Why do you eat and
drink with tax collectors and sinners?” Jesus answered, "Those who
are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the
righteous but sinners to repentance." (vv. 30-32) I'm not interested
in simply diagnosing sin, I want to treat the sinner…to bring help to
those in desperate need, to bring people back to God.
I’m
struck by the picture of friendship in these stories; compassionate men who
carry their friend to Jesus’ house where he is healed of his illness. A man touched by the mercy of God who invites
his friends to a dinner party where they can meet Jesus for themselves. I would not have been born if it were not for a friend who decided to invite
my mother to a church where she met Christ and eventually met and married my father. I wish I could thank that woman today. I wish I could meet that friend. I can’t, but I have met men and women that in small and large ways have befriended those who
did not know Christ…and gradually shared with them the gift of His friendship, men and women who have become the friend of "sinners" like them.
Some of you need to know that Christ desires to be that friend "who stays closer than a brother." Others of you are being called to carry
someone into the middle of the joyous circle of Jesus’ forever friends,
to invite them to the great banquet table of His grace.
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