On one of those days, as he was teaching, Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting there, who had come from every village of Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem. And the power of the Lord was with him to heal. And behold, some men were bringing on a bed a man who was paralyzed, and they were seeking to bring him in and lay him before Jesus, but finding no way to bring him in, because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and let him down with his bed through the tiles into the midst before Jesus. And when he saw their faith, he said, “Man, your sins are forgiven you.” And the scribes and the Pharisees began to question, saying, “Who is this who speaks blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God alone?” When Jesus perceived their thoughts, he answered them, “Why do you question in your hearts? Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven you,’ or to say, ‘Rise and walk’? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he said to the man who was paralyzed—“I say to you, rise, pick up your bed and go home.” And immediately he rose up before them and picked up what he had been lying on and went home, glorifying God. And amazement seized them all, and they glorified God and were filled with awe, saying, “We have seen extraordinary things today.”—Luke 5:17–26

 

Introduction

This week we start a series of sermons on Advent. What is advent? It is a word that simply means “coming.” Advent celebrates the coming of Christ. He comes to deliver his people. He is the light of the world, and he has come to dispel the darkness. But what does this deliverance look like? What difference does it really make? The main point of this sermon is that Jesus’ coming makes an undeniable difference.

Someone may wonder why we would spend four weekends preparing for Christmas. One Christmas carol gives the answer in a one-sentence summary. “The hopes and fears of all the years are met in Thee tonight.”

Let us make it really personal this advent. Let’s talk about our hopes and fears. I find that many hopes center around the removal of whatever hurts us most at the moment. Our fears tend to orbit around pain as well—either the potential of it or the fear that the pain we feel will never stop. What is your pain today? Is it relational pain? Is it a marriage that is on the rocks or has already come to an end? Is it physical pain? Is it the hurt of a wayward son or daughter? Is it the loss of a job or the loss of a loved one or unfair treatment? What is the thing that hurts so bad that you struggle to think about anything else?

Let me add another layer. What do you do with your pain when you reach the point where you realize you are confronted with what you cannot change? Some of you have this hurt, and you respond in different ways. Some of you cry yourselves to sleep. Others have a flood of tears all dammed up and feeling like the dam could break at any point. You have to be strong just to stifle the tears. Others are just plain mad. You have the urge to lash out at the world or people around you or you just feel like sitting and stewing over how hard your circumstances are. Others decide that they will just get really good at ignoring it. Distractions abound—entertain it away, drown it away in drinking, sleep it away.

Now let me add yet another layer. What happens when someone treads on your greatest hurt or fear with an insensitive comment or question? Have you ever felt like exploding? I had a friend who was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder that came from watching one of his friends be shot down by helicopter fire. The person lay there shot to pieces, dying in his arms. When he came home, some well-meaning Christians tried to give comforting words with reminders like “all things work together for good to those who love God.” Good? Holding someone in your arms who is mangled and dying is good? Good is having your legs shot off? It doesn’t seem good or right to have innocent people die. My friend struggled with the searing emotional pain that seemed to taunt him by saying that it just seems like whoever has the bigger stick wins. It is just a power struggle, and the weak get walked on by the strong?

What did my friend need to hear at that point? Isn’t Romans 8:28 true? Yes, it is gloriously true, but was that what they most needed to hear at that moment? Think for a moment how you would respond. Now let us ask an even more fascinating question. How would Jesus have responded?

John 11 is a good case in point. Tim Keller points out that Jesus responds to two sisters very differently when they tell him that their brother Lazarus would not have died if he had been there. He told one sister the truth that he was the resurrection and the life. He didn’t just have the power to make Lazarus live—he was the power. Death was no problem for him. He saw that Martha needed the ministry of truth.

But Jesus answered the second sister very differently. She got the ministry of tears. Jesus just asked her where they laid the body. She showed Jesus, and Jesus wept. Look at how fully human Jesus is. As God, he has the power over death and life. As fully human, he has plumbed the depth of human pain. He knew when someone needed the full weight of truth to hold them up, and he knew when someone needed the truth of weeping with those who weep. He responded to people perfectly in every situation according to the needs of the moment.

Which is why I find Luke 5:20 so shocking. He reveals the real need of the paralytic when he says, “Man, your sins are forgiven you.” This is shocking at so many levels. Let’s try to recover the shock of this story as we work our way through it in three movements: faith, forgiveness, and fact finding.

Faith (vv. 17–20)

 

On one of those days, as he was teaching, Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting there, who had come from every village of Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem. And the power of the Lord was with him to heal. And behold, some men were bringing on a bed a man who was paralyzed, and they were seeking to bring him in and lay him before Jesus, but finding no way to bring him in, because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and let him down with his bed through the tiles into the midst before Jesus. And when he saw their faith . . .

Luke tells us that the power of the Lord was with Jesus to heal (Luke 5:17). Jesus was God, but as God the Son he never acted independently from God the Father. At Jesus’ baptism, the Father had declared him to be the beloved Son, and God the Spirit had come upon him fully for fulfilling his Messianic mission. Power to heal is there.

Now we hear about someone who needs to be healed. He is a paralytic. I don’t know if you have anyone in your life like this, with such a debilitating disability. Someone very close to me in our family is in a wheelchair. This person is paralyzed from the waist down. Take a moment to consider how much you take walking and running for granted. I can remember all the running we had to do in college basketball. I had just finished a long run with the team. We were complaining about how tired we were, how much our sides ached, and how we couldn’t laugh because we would just start coughing and wheezing. Then I saw one of my college friends struggling up the sidewalk in his wheelchair. In that moment, I felt so small. I was complaining about how much I had to do something that this person would give almost anything to do. Instant perspective.

The friends of this paralyzed man will not be deterred. They know that they can’t do anything to heal their friend, but they have faith that all they need to do is get him to Jesus. They keep running into road blocks. They can get him to the door but not anywhere close to Jesus inside the house because of the crowd. But “no” is not an option at this point. They go to the roof, they take out a tile, and they lower him down to Jesus. We know what to expect. They are lowering a paralytic down to the One who has the power to heal. Let’s look at Jesus’ response now in the rest of verse 20.

Forgiveness (v. 20) 

And when he saw their faith, he said, “Man, your sins are forgiven you.”

Wait, what? Forgiveness? What about healing? There is nothing in the story to suggest that this man was coming to ask for forgiveness. He and his friends wanted healing. Luke tells us that Jesus has the power to heal. People are coming to him like in the doctor’s office. A man with a gunshot wound coming to a doctor in the emergency room would not expect the doctor to say, “Ok, your sins are forgiven.”

This almost looks out of touch. The man comes to Jesus for healing, and Jesus talks about forgiveness? This story does not scandalize people because they keep reading and see that Jesus does heal him of his paralysis. But Jesus gives no indication that he is planning to heal him at all. Would Jesus still be good in your mind if he had not healed the paralytic? Jesus healed him only to prove that he had the power to forgive. The paralytic does not realize that he is really paralyzed by unforgiven sin as his biggest problem and most dire need. Let us work on way to the resolution of the story as we come to see healing and forgiveness together.

Fact Finding or Fault Finding: Prove It!

And the scribes and the Pharisees began to question, saying, “Who is this who speaks blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God alone?” When Jesus perceived their thoughts, he answered them, “Why do you question in your hearts? Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven you,’ or to say, ‘Rise and walk’? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he said to the man who was paralyzed—“I say to you, rise, pick up your bed and go home.” And immediately he rose up before them and picked up what he had been lying on and went home, glorifying God. And amazement seized them all, and they glorified God and were filled with awe, saying, “We have seen extraordinary things today.”

No one was expecting Jesus to extend the promise of forgiveness. This is the first time this word has appeared for forgiveness of sins in this gospel (v. 20). It appears three more times (vv. 21, 23, 24), and it won’t appear again until chapter 7 in the story we will see next week. Perhaps the religious leaders are the most shocked of all. In their mind, Jesus has committed the worst possible sin. Jesus is not just wrong—he has committed blasphemy. Blasphemy is a whole other category of sin. It is a cosmic crime to claim that you can do something that only God can do. The Jewish leaders want to defend the honor of God’s name against such a scandalous claim. If you commit a cosmic wrong, how does someone take you to cosmic court? You are claiming something that belongs exclusively to God.

The reader is not put in a position where we either have to conclude that Jesus is wrong or the religious leaders are wrong. Either way, someone is guilty of a cosmic crime. Someone is committing blasphemy here. The religious leaders are right about one thing: Only God can forgive sin in an ultimate, cosmic sense. Is Jesus God? If he is God, it is a cosmic crime to tell him that he is not. If he is not God, then it is a cosmic crime for him or for us to say that he is.

Do you see at this point that the story forces us to go to a place where almost no one wants to go today? People want to claim that all religions are equal. They are either equally wrong or equally right. Tim Keller talks about doing a panel with a Muslim cleric, and they both tried to make their differing beliefs clear and why they thought they were right. A young man in the audience responded and said, “I hear you both saying that God is a loving God and that we should love him and love each other. You are saying the same things. These religions, like all religions, are fundamentally the same.” They both tried to answer again and clarify that they were saying very different things and that they both couldn’t be right. The young man disagreed with them very dogmatically. In talking with the young man after the panel, Keller discerned the fear behind the young man’s dogmatic position. If all religions were equally wrong or equally right, then he did not have to do the hard work of deciding what was right. It calmed his conscience to think that he could just dismiss it all.

1. S. Lewis tried to make the same point here about Jesus. No one has the option of saying that he was just a good moral teacher. He is either a liar (he knew he wasn’t God but tried to trick people into thinking he was), he was a lunatic (he sincerely thought he was God, but he was wrong), or he is Lord.

We are all in that position in this story. What are the claims and what is the evidence? Think about the claim of forgiveness from another angle. Here is the additional shock of saying that you can forgive someone. If someone personally sins against me, then I can forgive them at a horizontal level, but even then I can’t forgive them at the vertical level.

If Jesus is merely human, he has no business talking about forgiving the paralytic. Let’s imagine that a husband and a wife had a fight on the way to church, and the husband said some harsh words. The wife heard them, the kids heard them, and let’s say the car next to them even heard them. The car next to them happened to also attend Bethlehem, and they came to me and said, “You know that _____ family, they had a fight, and the husband said some harsh things.” So, I saw the husband coming up to me at the end of the service, and I said, “Mr. _____, I forgive you.”

I think he would look at me a little funny. “What do you mean?” he might ask, “I didn’t sin against you! You are not the one that can forgive me.”

Jesus can claim that everyone has sinned against him because he claims to be God. The Bible says that all sin is first and foremost against God. David confessed his sin in Psalm 51. His sin included adultery and murder and he still said, “against you, you only have I sinned” (Psalm 51:4). Jesus is acting like all sin is against him. He not only claims to have authority to forgive sin but he also claims that it is against him and therefore can be forgiven by him.

Let’s look at the evidence. Is he God or a blasphemer? Two pieces of evidence stand out.

First, Jesus knows what only God knows, which is what is in their hearts. 

When Jesus perceived their thoughts, he answered them, “Why do you question in your hearts?”—Luke 5:21-22

Mark goes even further in stressing this point. The Gospel of John makes the same point. Jesus did not need mans’ word about man because he knew what was in man. Jesus not only knew this man’s sin; he knew the sinful thoughts of the scribes and Pharisees (vv. 21–22). That should have given them pause or made them think, “Wait, did I say that out loud? How did he know that?”

Second, Jesus has the power of the creator.

Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven you,’ or to say, ‘Rise and walk’? ²⁴ But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he said to the man who was paralyzed—“I say to you, rise, pick up your bed and go home.” And immediately he rose up before them and picked up what he had been lying on and went home, glorifying God.—Luke 5:23-25

Jesus acknowledges that it is easy to say that one can forgive sins because it can’t be proven. You don’t start glowing or immediately get new clothes or a halo or something. So Jesus proposes to do something that can be proven or disproven: heal the paralytic. He says to the paralyzed man, “Get up, pick up your bed and go home.” Jesus’ command seems cruel if he were an ordinary person. He told a paralytic to do something he couldn’t do. Jesus as God has the power to create what he calls for—his words surge with Creation power like his words, “Let there be light.” Jesus knows what only God can know, and he does what only God can do. He is God.

Now let us deal with an immediate “felt need” problem that arises in applying this text. We have to face the fact that it looks like Jesus only healed the paralytic to prove that he had the power to forgive. What if he had not healed the paralytic? Would he still be God? Would he still be loving?

I believe that he shows he is God in identifying our real needs. How many people look at God in their pain and accuse him of failing them because of the presence of pain in their lives? Are you tempted to look at God right now and put him in the defendant’s chair as the accused? Have you ever said, “Jesus, this is the real pain in my life right now. All you seem to have given me is the promise of forgiveness. It is not enough!”

But don’t you see, dear friend? Jesus did not come in order to address all the symptoms of sin, but to address the root problem of sin itself. Sin entered into the world, and it brought condemnation and death. Every sickness, every abuse, every relationship breakdown, every heartache, every pain you feel pulsating through your body came into God’s perfect world as symptoms of the disease called sin.

Jesus came to address the root. He addressed the symptoms only to prove that he had the power to solve our root problem. Do you see your paralyzing problem or the direst need of your life? Jesus didn’t come like other leaders of other religions to show us what we need to do to save ourselves from all our problems. He is the Savior. How many paralytics were not healed? How many people did Jesus not revive from death? How many demons remained on the loose?

This story reveals our tendency to think that the physical is more real and more important and that the spiritual is less real and less important. However, the physical is an emblem because it is the symptom, and the spiritual is the substance.

Imagine the following scenario. Let us say that you could see your real need is the danger of eternal death. You are doing problem triage. You come into the cosmic emergency room, and the doctors try to determine what the most important and urgent need to be addressed is. If you stack up all the pain and all the problems of this present world on top of each other, they would not even come close to the problem of eternal condemnation. Imagine being spiritually bleeding and ready to enter into an eternity of hell and having the doctor decide to fix your broken leg. That would be shocking malpractice. 

But that is exactly what secular solutions are: shocking malpractice. We care about all suffering—especially eternal suffering. The secular world does not care about eternal suffering because they deny the existence of eternal suffering. The secular world in which we live believes that the problems of the world are all external and the solution is internal. We need to change ourselves so that we can fix poverty and lack of education and disease and the rest. We have an external problem and a humanitarian solution.

The Christian knows that the problem is first and foremost inside of all of us and that the solution must come from outside of us. If the hurt in your life were healed, living in a fallen world just means that some other problem would rise to the surface next. In a fallen world, problems and pains are like whack-a-mole. You knock one down, and five more come up. Longing for a life and a world that is pain free and problem free is a longing for heaven—a longing for the second coming. Physical healing is only secondary and supplementary to spiritual healing in the first coming. The second coming is when God will make all things new. The symptoms of a fallen world will be no more.

The characters in our story show that they did not understand their real need. They just marvel and say something extraordinary happened. If Jesus’ point would have come home to the crowd, then they all would have been running to him and pressing in on him to forgive them. 

I have two questions for you in this sermon. I want to distinguish between personal faith and missionary faith. Personal faith comes to Jesus and believes that he alone can and does forgive my personal sins against God. Missionary faith brings others to Jesus because you believe that he alone can do what no one else can. Missionary faith would take these invitation cards and find a way to bring your friends to Jesus. Bake some Christmas cookies for your neighbors and include an invitation card. Have some on hand at work to invite your associates. If they ask you what you are doing over the weekend, don’t be lame and say nothing.  Tell them you are going to church and invite the, or, better yet, offer to bring them. It is a scary place to come if you don’t know your way around. Maybe you have tried before. Don’t stop. What would trying the roof look like for you? What would trying the roof look like in your own desire to come to Jesus, pressing on to know him more?

Last week we noted the promise of Isaiah: “Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands (Isaiah 49:16). Never, ever, ever in the ancient world would one see the name of a servant tattooed on a master. That would put the Master in the role of the servant! But how could this be anything more than a metaphor? God does not have physical hands. God is a spirit and does not have a body like humans.

So what did God do? He came to earth and took on flesh through the miracle of the incarnation by the power of the Holy Spirit. He took on flesh so that this promise could become a reality in history. Try to imagine the work of Christ without the incarnation. The nail prints forever testify as the proof of God’s love for us. “Crown him the Lord of love. Behold his hands and side. Rich wounds yet visible above in beauty glorified.”

We must understand the difference between felt needs and forever needs or else we will be tempted to think God has failed us. We have failed to have proper expectations. Think of the difference in importance between felt needs and forever needs. My favorite illustration of this is still the story of Martyn Lloyd–Jones at the end of his life. His friends would come over to try to encourage him, and they would end up getting depressed. They would say, “Martyn, you used to be this great preacher, and now it takes you what seems like an eternity to get from your couch to your bed because you are so sick.” He simply quoted Luke 10:20, telling them, “’Do not rejoice that the demons are subject to your name. Rejoice that your names are written in heaven.’ Why should I be discouraged? I am no less saved today than I was when I was preaching about salvation. In fact, salvation is nearer than when I first believed.”

How does that help us here and now? The secret of Christianity is that there is no secret. It is the gospel. Christ’s coming is all we need to make it to glory. He opens paradise, and his power guards our hearts so that we will make it. He sustains our faith and ensures our perseverance. We endure by his power.

We long for the second coming. In the age to come, all sickness will be gone. Our eternal inheritance will be so good for so long that it will make all the problems and pain we have encountered here seem like a single night at a bad hotel. He will make all the sad things untrue. (St. Theresa of Avil). 

Advent does not put on blinders and see only a manger. Advent is more than a manger—certainly not less, but just as certainly more than a manger. Advent celebrates all the wonders of Christ’s coming and the anticipation of the second coming.

Closing Song

"O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing"

 

Sermon Discussion Questions

Outline

1. Faith (vv. 17–20a)
2. Forgiveness (v. 20b)
3. Fact-Finding (vv. 21–26)

Main Point: Jesus’ coming makes an undeniable difference.

Discussion Questions

1. What unexpected surprises were present in the story that you had not seen before?
2. What evidence is there in the story to show that Jesus is God and can forgive sin?

Application Questions

1. Do you have personal (evangelical) faith in Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins?
2. Do you have evangelistic faith that believes in bringing people to Jesus because he is their only hope?