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Two Sundays ago, we began a new series entitled, “Wreck the Roof”. This series has been based on text of Mark 2:1-12. In the first week, we saw the motivation and the lengths that the 4 friends try to get their friend into the presence of Jesus. Last Sunday, we talked about how Jesus responds to our faith. He sees past what we think is the problem and deals with the real issues of our lives. When He is in the house, it becomes a house of miracles.
Today we will wrap up this short 3 week series by looking at the crowds. These were the people who filled up the house to see Jesus.
We know that Jesus had followers every where that he went. But at this point, he has not even finished calling the 12 men we refer to as disciples. It’s at the beginning of his public ministry. As a matter of fact, He will leave this event and call Matthew, the tax collector to a change of life and to be one of his disciples, close friends and followers.
The people that society calls sinners, Jesus called friends. He drew in the type of people that we consider to be outcasts and outliers. He offered them a better of life and a chance at redemption.
His overriding message and the one that we still find today in the word is one of redemption, forgiveness and acceptance. It was so different from what the religious of the day thought. If we are honest, its still different from what we are be shown in a lot of modern day Christians as well.
When we talk about Wrecking the Roof, we have talked about how 4 guys destroyed a perfectly roof, one that was made to keep the elements out and keep the warmth in, all to make a space for just one more. Jesus wrecked the roof of what people thought was possible in the natural and spiritual world.
In the room that day, the roof was not just wrecked from a physical point of view, but also in a spiritual point of view. People who had been brought up to believe one thing were shaken to their core and their lives eternally wrecked by Jesus.
So lets look at our text one last time today…Mark 2:1-12
One thing that we need to remind ourselves is that a paralytic person by definition has no ability to move. They are left motionless or without enough power or personal ability to move. Because of his condition, he would have been:
Shamed by others (what could he bring to anything)
Judged by others (it would be assumed there was sin or family sin)
Would have been suspected of wrong doing (he was being punished)
The crowd that filled the room that day, probably would have encountered this paralytic man at some point in time. That’s because he would have been dependent on the kindness of others to survive.
As we read the word, we see how the sick, the lame, the blind, the ones who had no voice, all hung around the city’s busiest areas and around the temple gates. They did that because the knew that the religious were bound by Mosaic law to help people in need. They knew that the religious would do it if only to be seen as a good person.
This guy would been have been known by reputation as unable to make a way for himself. People would have pitied him but also looked down on him as a dredge of society.
But remember, Jesus came for those type of people. When we read the messianic prophecies of the old testament, we will see that Messiah was not just a deliverer of a nation, but more importantly a deliverer of the person.
Jesus read the text of Isaiah in the temple for the people and declared that day had come…(Luke 4)
Isaiah 61:1-3 (ESV) 1 The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; 2 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; 3to grant to those who mourn in Zion— to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit; that they may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified.
There was a time, and maybe still is true for some today, that we were helpless, hopeless, and desperate like the paralyzed man. We needed Jesus and still do.
This paralyzed guy is a great image of our lives before the touch of Jesus on us. Its what we look like in the spiritual world before He goes to work for our lives. You can’t walk in the abundant life of God if you are still paralyzed and held back by the sin that can entangle you.
I think one of the tragedies of our world today is this idea of universalism or that God can be all things to all people depending on your need. You were created for God not the other way around. We don’t get to define who God is what his standard is. It is written in the word right in front of us.
At times, even as Christians, even as Christ followers, we need to allow Jesus once again to wreck our lives and to set us free from bad teaching, and more importantly bad believing. Churches are filled each week all over our country with people desiring to be near Jesus. It’s why we come.
If you came today to hear a good preacher, you may be let down. If you came for concert quality, you may be let down. But if you came to encounter Christ, he will be found. He is willing to touch your life and mine with his power to overcome. When he does, we will never be the same again!
People like us and the love of people like us, is what motivated Jesus to go to the cross. We will turn our attention as a movement over the next few weeks to the cross and an empty tomb. What a celebration and an amazing event. But if you don’t understand the motivation behind it, you will miss the point. It will become just a cross of gold you wear around your neck, but never allowed to touch your heart.
The people in the house that day obviously were drawn to Jesus. They wanted to be there. But the truth is, they paid homage with their time, but didn’t truly get what motivated him as of yet. He was motivated by love. Just as we should be.
1 John 4:7-11 (ESV) 7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
Love is what defines God. Its what defined Jesus, and what must define the church today. It is our calling. Love gives. Love helps. Love serves.
Love will do what it takes to get one more in the room.
The truth is the crowds ignored this guy and didn’t see what he could offer in that moment with Jesus. They didn’t understand the power that Jesus had. Because if they had, they would moved heaven and earth to help get the paralytic man to Him.
Jesus touches the real issue though once he get inside the house. It may have looked like the paralyzation was the problem, but it more about the heart issue that would keep him from the kingdom that Jesus taught about. Remember, Jesus taught the word when people gathered around.
When He offers this paralytic man forgiveness of his sin…it left people perplexed. They knew Jesus was a powerful teacher, but only God had the power to forgive sins. They even pondered it. It didn’t mean these people had a bad thoughts. Only that they couldn’t understand what was happening in front of them.
“Only God can forgive”…that is still a true statement today and in that moment, Jesus didn’t correct them either. He just posed another question to them. Which is easier to say? Forgiveness or healing…and then he gave them the reason for what He was about to do. The healing.
Sometimes the prayers we pray are very spiritual in nature, meaning that we believe that God do something in our lives that we know happened, but on the outside it will never be seen. Salvation is one of those miracles that Jesus does in our hearts. It may change your actions, attitude, your way of looking at things, but at the same time, it is a spiritual transformation that happens to our spirit man.
People every day encounter the Jesus of the bible and don’t see changes. They walk away unmoved because they are looking for signs. The people of that time were doing the same thing. They wanted to see messiah deliverance, they just didn’t understand that they could be physically still in bondage but spiritually free.
Faith brings our freedom! Our faith comes by hearing the word of God. The people had been hearing the word, but in a moment, they would see what happens when the word comes alive.
We are all on a journey with God. I am thankful that He hasn’t just finished with us yet. We will be changed little by little so that we can hold on to the change that happening in us. Jesus does the hard part in our lives. But we have to do what we can in each moment as well.
We can plan and do things with the purpose to seeing God do miracles in our friends and family, but it still comes down to the power of God that makes it happen. We are saved by our actions…we are saved by our faith. But our faith should lead to a changed life. Where we love God and love others with all that we have.
Mark 2:12 (ESV) And he rose and immediately picked up his bed and went out before them all, so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, “We never saw anything like this!”
(NLT) 12 And the man jumped up, grabbed his mat, and walked out through the stunned onlookers. They were all amazed and praised God, exclaiming, “We’ve never seen anything like this before!”
I like the NLT description of this…he came in through the roof. But when the roof was wrecked, he went out through the people. Meaning, the same people that didn’t make room for him to come in, moved to the side when he went out. Their response…stunned.
It wasn’t just a few of the people that were amazed, the bible says “they all were amazed and praised God.” Why, was it because the man walked? Or was it because they knew that Jesus could forgive as well.
Faith has a way of spreading like wildfire. When we as Christians come to church and expect God to do the unexpected, that will spread to other people. Others will start coming in expectation.
These people saw how Jesus reacted to faith, and now they had an opportunity to see what their faith would do. The man was met with GRACE in his sin, and they could too. They hadn’t seen that before because GRACE was about ritual not about a God of love.
Grace has a powerful effect on our lives:
It Challenges
It relieves
It comforts
It convicts
It provokes
It forgives
You and I cannot do enough to make God love us. He love us because He is God. It’s his nature. It’s what He does and is. Everything that God does proves who He is and what His nature is. He can’t and won’t do anything that deviates from His word. Everything that is God is drawing us as people.
The sad thing is, that things we do as people is what pushes people away from God. But when we are touched in our faith, it should be contagious.
The people in the house wanted to be with Jesus, they wanted to hear his teaching. But it wasn’t until their faith was ignited that something changed. When they saw this mans faith get rewarded, it started a movement in them as well.
Sometimes we say anyone can come to Jesus, but the truth is that’s what we mean. We believe anyone can come to Jesus as long as they do what we think is right. Jesus says, forgiveness offered to anyone that believes.
When Jesus touches our lives, we will never be same. You will always carry the sign of someone who has been in his presence. Moses had a glow about him when he left the presence of God. Jacob walked with a limp for the rest of his days. This guy walked out of the house healed, and people knew it. He had a mark and a story that probably caused others to believe in the power of Jesus.
These people in the house knew about Jesus, just as a lot of people around the world do. But the problem is that they didn’t have an intimate knowledge of Jesus. That’s different. You can like Jesus but not truly love Him. I believe that there are a lot of people out there that like Him, they like his teaching, they like his voice, but they have never internalized who He is in their lives. Love has a look to it.
Those people in the house that day like Jesus, they just hadn’t been moved to love as of yet.
Matthew 15:8 (ESV) “‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me;
The gospel is the power of God to save. (Romans 1:16)
The gospel is really a God story. That He so loved the world that He gave his son to die for us on a cross so that we might believe and have eternal life.
The bible is God’s letter to us and the basis for our faith…but faith is not just about the bible. There was no bible when Jesus walked the earth. The Christian faith existed before the first page was published.
People believed because of what they experienced and what they heard others declare. The same is true today. Most will never pick up the bible and find faith on their own. They will find it through your experience and what God has done in your life. It ignites something true in them.
The crowd of the room went from questioning the ability of Jesus to forgive sins to praising God for what they had experienced!
The church becomes the most appealing to outsiders when the message of grace is the most apparent. Its when we declare the greatness of the message of grace. Excitement builds for us when we see lives changed.
The man who couldn’t walk into the house, depended on others to get him there. Had a faith moment that became contagious and because of it, others believed and praised the lord. Coming out of that event, he calls out to the most broken and the worst of jewish society to be his followers and it still does it today! Trust me, Matthew had heard what was happening in that house. He heard of something that caused him to believe that Jesus could change his situation.
Acts 2:22 (ESV) Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know—
Peter message appealed to the crowds because of the miracles that proved who Jesus was and what He was.
Matthew 11:2-5 (ESV) 2 Now when John heard in prison about the deeds of the Christ, he sent word by his disciples 3 and said to him, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?” 4 And Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: 5 the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers[a] are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them.
Jesus told them to say look at what you see! What is happening? It proves that God is doing something!
Miracles show us that Jesus was:
Truly God
Truly Human
The one and only Messiah
In the moment the crowd saw more than just a miracle, they saw the validation of the son of God. The saw him making someones life brand new!
Today, as we get ready to shift our focus over the next couple of weeks to outreach and the cross, we need to search ourselves. Do we love Jesus in a way that others hear about it? Do we truly believe He is the only way?
If you are here today and you have become like the crowds, there is a chance for a big change in your life.