Transcript

One author wrote this: The man couldn’t walk. He couldn’t stand. His limbs were bent and his body twisted. A waist-high world walked past as he sat and watched.

Whether he was born paralyzed or became paralyzed—the end result was the same: total dependence on others. Someone had to wash him.

He couldn’t blow his nose or go on a walk. When he ran, it was in his dreams, and his dreams would always awaken to a body that couldn’t roll over and couldn’t go back to sleep for all the hurt the dream had brought.

When people looked at him, they didn’t see the man; they saw a body in need of a miracle. And that’s certainly what his friends saw. So they did what any of us would do for a friend. They tried to get him some help.

By the time his friends arrived at the place, the house was full. People jammed the doorways. Kids sat in the windows. Others peeked over shoulders. How would this small band of friends ever attract Christ’s attention? They had to make a choice.

Do we go in or give up? What would have happened had the friends given up? What if they had shrugged their shoulders and mumbled something about the crowd being big and dinner getting cold and turned and left?

After all, they had done a good deed in coming this far. Who could fault them for turning back? You can only do so much for someone. But these friends hadn’t done enough. One said that he had an idea.

The four huddled over the paralytic and created the plan to climb to the top of the house, cut through the roof, and lower their friend down.

It was risky—they could fall. It was dangerous—he could fall. It was unorthodox—de-roofing is against the norm. It was intrusive—Christ was busy with all these people. But it was their only chance. So they climbed to the roof.

Faith does these things. Faith is ingenious, it does the unexpected, the risky, the unorthodox. And faith gets God’s attention.

Mark 2:1-2: “And again he entered into Capernaum after some days; and it was noised that he was in the house.

“And straightway many were gathered together, insomuch that there was no room to receive them, no, not so much as about the door: and he preached the word unto them.”

This account takes place in Capernaum, located on the shore of the Sea of Galilee.

Earlier in Capernaum, the Lord had cast out a demon from a man in the synagogue and healed Peter’s mother-in-law. Following this, He went throughout Galilee preaching, healing, and casting out demons.

Here in verse 1, we see that the Lord returned to Capernaum. Word got out quickly that the Lord was in town. And as the word got out, the people “immediately” came.

They came from every direction. They came like soldiers returning from battle: bandaged, crippled, sightless. The deaf, the diseased, the mute, the barren all came.

And not only did the sick come, but the curiosity seekers were also there, and religious leaders were in the crowd.

Mark stresses how great the multitude of people was, by saying there was no more room to receive any more, and that the crowd was “not so much as about the door,” or there were so many people you couldn’t even get “near the door” of the house.

The “house” here is Peter’s house. In the context of this book, the only house mentioned in Capernaum in Mark, was “the house of Simon and Andrew” in chapter 1, verse 29.

As Christ ministered to the crowd, verse 2 says out of His love and concern for them, He “preached the Word to them,” teaching from the scrolls of the Jewish Scriptures, the law of Moses, the prophets, the wisdom writings.

And again we know what Christ preached unto them based on the context of this book where earlier in Mark 1:14,15 it says, “Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.”

Christ was sharing the good news of the coming kingdom which was “at hand,” and teaching the Scriptures pertaining to it and to Himself, who is Israel’s Messiah-King.

He was calling for repentance and belief in the gospel of the kingdom, so that people might be saved and have life and be able to enter the glories of that earthly kingdom.

Mark 2:3-5: “And they come unto Him, bringing one sick of the palsy, which was borne of four.

“And when they could not come nigh unto Him for the press, they uncovered the roof where He was: and when they had broken it up, they let down the bed wherein the sick of the palsy lay. When Jesus saw their faith, He said unto the sick of the palsy, Son, thy sins be forgiven thee.”

Right in the middle of the Lord’s preaching of the Word, something happens. Four men bring their paralyzed friend to Christ. They come fully believing that if they can get this man to the Lord, that He was able to heal his body.

They had the faith to believe that Christ could and would meet his need. The severity of the man’s paralysis is seen by the fact that he couldn’t walk, he was totally immobile, and confined to a stretcher. The paralytic was unable to come to Christ himself, but he was fortunate enough to have four friends who were able to get him to the Lord.

This passage teaches us of the blessing of having friends with faith, which is so crucial to have in life. And in the local church, the Lord provides us with the opportunity to create relationships and friendships with people of faith.

It’s a blessing to have people who are there for you ready to assist, to pray, and to love and serve one another in time of need, like these men did for the paralytic.

When the 4 men with the paralytic arrive at the house, they find that the crowd is so large that they cannot get into the house or to the Lord through the door.

These men were deeply concerned about their friend and wanted to see him helped. And they refused to allow difficult circumstances to give up hope of getting their friend to the Lord. So they worked together and put their heads together, did some creative thinking, and dared to do something unusual.

Necessity is the mother of invention, and so they decided to climb the outside staircase of the house, locate the ceiling directly above the Lord’s head, BREAK through the roof, and lower the stretcher bearing their paralyzed friend right in front of Him.

Now, houses in that day were usually constructed with flat roofs. A set of stairs on the side of the house allowed access to the roof, which was used much like we use a deck.

They were used for relaxation in the cool of the day, and for sleeping on hot nights.

These roofs were usually made by laying timbers across the top of the house. These timbers were then covered by a layer of branches.

Then this was covered by a layer of clay slabs, or hardened, dried clay tiles, and finally, a coat of fresh, wet clay was spread and rolled over those slabs of hardened clay to serve as a seal against the rain.

So the words “uncovered the roof” and “had broken it up” in verse 4 involved a lot of effort and work. This was no easy job. So imagine the scene.

Christ is teaching in the house, these four men arrive carrying their friend, when they could not get in at the door, they went up the stairs onto the roof.

Once there, they begin to dig through the roof, digging out the top coat of clay, removing and tearing away several of the clay slabs, pulling and tugging and pushing at the underlying branches and timbers, until they have made an opening large enough.

Then imagine the crowd and those inside the house, at first, hearing the racket up on the roof, as they begin breaking up the roof for their makeshift hole, then the debris from the roof begins to rain down on them, and they clamor and struggle to get out of the way.

The crowd is amazed at what’s taking place. I imagine Peter and his wife were likely distraught, wondering if their homeowner’s insurance would cover the costs of repair.

Then blue sky is seen and bright sunlight streams down into the darkness of the home, from the hole in the roof.

Particles of dust hang in the air from the roof deconstruction. And then the stream of light is blocked as the friends swing the stretcher over the hole and they begin to lower their friend into the room.

People start shuffling and moving to get out of the way until a space is opened large enough for the stretcher on the floor.

And the paralyzed man is lowered down right in front of the Lord, who had been watching the whole scene. Once the man was lowered, the whole room is quiet now, the crowd is silent, waiting to see what will happen next.

The whole room waits expectantly, looking at the Lord. What will He say? What will He do? And up above the whole scene are the four happy, smiling, hopeful friends looking down on it all, sitting on the edge of their hole, with their feet dangling through it.

They were four determined men who had enough love for their friend and enough faith in the Lord that they were willing to take a chance and risk embarrassment and injury to get Him to the Lord.

They could’ve given up because of the logistics and difficulties of the scenario. They had a legitimate excuse. It’s too full, too crowded. There’s no way in.

They had a faith that refused to quit in the face of obstacles. Their friend couldn’t walk, so they carried him. The crowd blocked their access to Christ, so they went around them. The roof was in the way, so they tore a hole in it.

The men had gone to extraordinary lengths to place their friend before the Lord, because they believed He possessed authority over illness, believing no disease or dysfunction was too difficult for Him to cure.

In faith they dared to do what was difficult, and to put work and effort behind their faith. These men were willing to do whatever it took to bring that man to the Lord. Their same heart needs to beat within us!

The account emphasizes the need for our bringing people to Christ if they are ever going to come to Him.

The number one reason, by far, that people try a church is because a friend invites them. Not a flyer in the mail. Not TV, radio or newspaper advertising, not Google. It’s simply that a friend invited them or brought them.

These four men are examples of friends helping needy sinners to come to the Savior. That’s a true friend that does this, because it’s looking out for their greatest need. That hole in the ceiling, that broken roof is a picture of love.

You might have a friend, a coworker, a neighbor, a family member and you say, “There’s no way they’ll come to Christ. Or there’s no way they’ll come to church.” But we should not give up, like these friends did not give up, in doing whatever it took, and thinking creatively to get this man to the Lord.

These men brought their friend to the Lord, and we need to have the kind of faith and zeal these men had in doing so, faith that goes through the roof, zeal to tear apart a roof to get people to the Lord.

Verse 5 says Christ “saw their faith.” And the Lord loves to see people act in faith. The aggressive, persistent effort of the paralytic’s friends was visible evidence of their faith in Christ to heal. And Christ was moved by their faith.

Christ decided to help the paralytic patient in response to his faith and that of his friends. Christ had healed before by a word, a touch of the hand, and the sick immediately were restored to perfect health. But on this occasion, Christ did something different and He stunned the crowd by saying: “Son, your sins are forgiven you.”

The friends wanted Him to heal their friend. But Christ wouldn’t settle for a simple healing of the body—He wanted to heal the soul.

Christ leapfrogged the physical and dealt with the spiritual. To heal the body is temporal. To heal the soul is eternal.

The expectations of the friends and the crowd are high, but not high enough. They expect Christ to say “You’re healed.” Instead He says, “You’re forgiven.”

They expect Him to treat what they see, the body. He chooses to treat not only the body, but also the spiritual, because that is what He sees. And so the Lord addresses the man’s greater need first, and He asserts a prerogative that was God’s alone.

Mark 2:6-7: “But there were certain of the scribes sitting there, and reasoning in their hearts, Why doth this man thus speak blasphemies? who can forgive sins but God only?”

In Luke’s account of this miracle, he recorded that the Jewish religious leaders had come from Galilee, and also as far away as Judea and Jerusalem, which was 80 miles distant.

Christ’s reputation had spread and now the scribes and Pharisees were watching Him closely and critically. These men were given preferential treatment and were in the middle of Peter’s house with the Lord with front row seats for this miracle.

When Christ said, “Son, your sins are forgiven you,” they immediately understood the enormous implications of Christ’s declaration, and He was silently accused of blasphemy by these religious leaders as they reasoned within themselves and their hearts.

One writer insightfully said this, “Now unless the speaker is God, forgiving sins is preposterous. We can all understand how a man forgives offences against himself. You step on my toe and I forgive you, you steal my money and I forgive you.

“But what should we make of a man, himself unrobbed and untrodden on, who announced that he forgave you for treading on another man’s toes and stealing other men’s money?…Yet this is what Jesus did.

“He told people that their sins were forgiven, and never waited to consult all the other people whom their sins had undoubtedly injured. He unhesitatingly behaved as if He was the party chiefly concerned, the person chiefly offended in all offences.

“This makes sense only if He really was God whose laws are broken and whose love is wounded in every sin.”

Telling the paralytic his sins were forgiven was Christ claiming to be God. But in every way, Christ did have authority to forgive sins, because He is God.

In Isaiah 43:25 the Lord God said, “I, even I, am He that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins.”

The scribes correctly reasoned that “who can forgive sins but God only,” but they were incorrect in thinking that Christ blasphemed.

Instead of reasoning: He claims to forgive, only God forgives, therefore He must be God; they instead reasoned: this man cannot be God, thus, He is blaspheming. They failed to consider the possibility that Jesus Christ was indeed God.

Mark 2:8-12: “And immediately when Jesus perceived in his spirit that they so reasoned within themselves, he said unto them, Why reason ye these things in your hearts? Whether is it easier to say to the sick of the palsy, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and take up thy bed, and walk?

“But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (he saith to the sick of the palsy,) I say unto thee, Arise, and take up thy bed, and go thy way into thine house.

“And immediately he arose, took up the bed, and went forth before them all; insomuch that they were all amazed, and glorified God, saying, We never saw it on this fashion.”

In verse 8, we see how Christ, the all-knowing God, supernaturally perceived in His spirit and knew the reasoning and objections taking place in the scribes’ hearts. Since they were reasoning in their hearts, Christ gave them something else to ponder.

A proof test of His identity results from this, and Christ addresses their concerns directly with an intriguing and wise challenge.

He asks the religious leaders present: “Which is easier, to tell the man his sins are forgiven or tell him to stand up take up his bed and walk?”

Both statements required divine authority and power, and Christ was going to show He had power to do both as God.

Either of those statements is easy to make, but only one can be proved! So their reasoning would’ve led them to think that it’s easier to say “Your sins are forgiven,” because nobody can prove or disprove whether or not the forgiveness really took place.

So Christ was pointing out that it would be easy for someone to say that another’s sin was forgiven. No one could prove any differently. But the harder thing would be to heal a hopeless case of bedridden paralyzed man.

Commanding a paralytic to walk would be more difficult to say because the actions of the paralytic would immediately verify the effect of the command. If He said, “Get up and walk,” and he didn’t, this would expose powerlessness.

Therefore, to offer visual validation for the more difficult statement and to prove His power and authority BOTH to forgive sin and to heal paralysis as God, Christ then says the more difficult statement.

But before He did, to be certain that no one missed the significance of His action, He said, “So that you (the religious leaders) may know that the Son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins, I say to you (the paralytic), Get up, pick up your bed, and go to your house.”

And by the power of the Word that spoke the universe into existence, no sooner did the Lord issue the command that the paralyzed man “immediately” got up right away in front of them all, and he picked up his stretcher, and went to his house.

And Luke says that as he stood up and headed home, he went “glorifying God.” And we can be sure he was jumping and shouting as he glorified God. And I imagine the four friends running, jumping and shouting with him all the way home too!

Christ used the physical to prove the spiritual. He proved He had the authority to speak the one thing “your sins are forgiven,” by doing the other, healing the paralytic.

If He gave the command and the paralytic just continued to lie there, then Christ would be proven to be unable to heal or forgive sin. But when the man got up, it the truthfulness of His authority to forgive sins, because He is 100% God.

The people present were amazed and glorified God. This is what Christ wanted, as He came to give glory to the Father through His obedience.

They then said, “We never saw it on this fashion,” or “We never saw anything like this.” Luke says the people said, “We have seen strange things today.” The response is non-committal, not void of wonder and amazement, but void of faith in Christ.

The Lord’s miracles demonstrated His deity, and His compassion for people in need, and they also revealed important spiritual lessons about salvation. They were object lessons to teach what God could do if only they would believe in God’s Son. And we learn in this miracle of Christ’s authority as God to be able to forgive sin.

Surely, the paralyzed man, the four who brought him and the crowd thought that his greatest problem was the paralysis. But Christ knew the truth.

Sin was his greatest problem and He dealt with it first. Sin is the greatest problem for all of us. Because of sin, we are each broken. We need forgiveness and life.

And if we do not have our sins paid for and forgiven, sin will separate us forever from God. Christ’s purpose in coming to the earth was to bring forgiveness of sin through the payment for our sins at the cross.

Forgiveness of our sins in salvation is the greatest miracle, because it meets the greatest need. And it cost the greatest price through Christ’s shed blood. And it brings the greatest blessing and most lasting results, eternal results.

We find forgiveness of our sins in Christ alone, who as we see here, has absolute authority and power to forgive us as God! If you need salvation and the forgiveness of all your sins, you must come to the Lord Jesus Christ to find the complete forgiveness you need.

Complete forgiveness is available to all by the Cross, and it is offered to anyone and everyone by grace through faith alone today.

Ephesians 1:7 says, “In Whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace.” Just believing Christ died for you personally and rose again, we are saved and forgiven, ALL our sins, past, present, and future.

We each need Christ’s forgiveness. Then after receiving it by faith alone, we need to carry our friends to meet the Lord so they can find forgiveness in Him.

And we should follow their example of faith and love, that we would be willing to break through a roof if we have to, and do whatever it takes to bring others to the Savior.