And for our Old Testament reading, please turn to that psalm we just sang. Psalm 103. And our Old Testament reading will be verses one through five. And let’s give careful attention to this, because this is the very Word of God. of David. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good, so that your youth is renewed like the eagles. And then for our New Testament reading and the text for this morning’s message, please turn to the fifth chapter of Luke’s gospel. Luke chapter five in our reading will be verses 17 through 26.
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.
That’s the reading of God’s word. Let’s ask his blessing on it now. Father in heaven, please do bless the ministry of the word. We read that the gospel is your power for salvation to everyone who believes. We read that your word is breathed out by your spirit, and that it was written for our instruction. And so be our instructor through your spirit today, and do mighty things, because this is your mighty word. We pray these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
So it’s a real joy to hear how well Jack did on his examination before the committee recently, and we’re confident he’ll do equally well on his floor exam before Presbytery. But that got me to thinking about candidates, because what’s going to happen if it goes as normal is the next time Presbytery meets, our brother Jack is going to have to stand up before the whole Presbytery and bring a message.
And he’ll be evaluated on that, and that can be Somewhat nerve-wracking, somewhat intimidating. There’s always a certain degree of nerves involved when getting up and addressing a group of people. But you know, it’s not always easy for a candidate for licensure or a seminarian who’s preaching in chapel, being evaluated by his professors, to remember that the people listening are really for me.
They’re really for whoever it is that’s speaking. They want the person to succeed. They’re going to be critical. They’re going to listen carefully. They’re going to evaluate. But they’re in that person’s corner. And that’s a great place to be when your listeners are sympathetic, when they want you to do well.
Well, there’s a big, big difference between that, a seminarian preaching in chapel before his faculty, or a candidate preaching on the floor of Presbytery. The big difference between that And an occasion that I remember from a number of years ago where there was a conference being held, and it was being led by proponents of what we call the federal vision. And a number of ministers from around the country went to this conference just to get an idea of what these people were actually teaching, what they were actually saying.
They wanted to hear it from their own lips. They were curious. They were concerned. So they went listening. but not with that same kind of friendly support as the faculty would listen to a student or as the presbytery would listen to a candidate, but more with a critical ear. Again, to some extent, hoping that maybe these people aren’t heretics, hoping that what they’re preaching is in accord with sound doctrine, but going there to be sure that it is or to discern whether it is not. Do you follow? Now, the kind of audience Jesus had in that synagogue when he was preaching in our text today was not that friendly audience.
Now, some of them were. The crowd, the set of people described in our text as the crowd, they were supportive. They were hanging on Jesus’ words. They were there interested to hear him and to learn from him. But you had a hostile audience interspersed with them, as the text says. Sitting among them, there were Pharisees and teachers of the law.
Now, I want you to notice, if you’ve got your Bibles open, how Luke introduces several different events over the course of chapter 5 of his gospel. If you see verse 1, Luke introduces pericope, that scenario by saying, on one occasion, on one occasion, and then if you jump ahead to verse 12, he says, well, he was in one of the cities. And then our text today says, on one of those days when he is teaching, so you see, Luke is being vague. as far as not putting a specific timestamp or location stamp on these, because his goal here is not to give us a chronological sequence of events and say, this happened and then this happened. Oh, and after that, this happened. Luke’s goal here is to present to you and to me a select set, a select set of Christ’s mighty works for our instruction.
He chooses these particular events, these particular happenings, to teach us things about Jesus. Also, beginning with today’s text, there are a series of five occasions, which some have called controversy stories, which show for us the rising antagonism now. against Jesus by the religious leaders of the Jews, the scribes, the Pharisees, the teachers of the law. Men who were known for their expertise in the scriptures came to hear Jesus teach the scriptures. So it would be like Jesus teaching seminary professors, except in this case, he’s teaching seminary professors that don’t particularly like him. don’t particularly want him to succeed in ministry, don’t particularly approve.
But what we find from this passage is that the Lord Jesus Christ, as the second person of the Trinity, has authority to forgive sins. That’s the big takeaway from this passage. And it’s very important because every Lord’s Day when we meet together and we confess our sins and then we hear words of pardon and comfort, you need to know that Jesus Christ has authority to declare your sins forgiven. And actually, in fact, to forgive them. The Lord Jesus Christ, as the second person of the Trinity, has authority to forgive sins.
And here are three points. First of all, sin is mankind’s greatest problem. That’s number one. Number two, Jesus is the only solution to man’s sin problem. And number three, all glory for our salvation. belongs to God alone. So, first of all, sin is mankind’s greatest problem. The pattern that I think I’ve mentioned to you before holds here where the emphasis in Jesus’ ministry is on teaching. That’s what comes first. That’s really what’s most important.
Jesus went about teaching and preaching. He also did miracles. He healed. He cleansed lepers and on and on and on. But the priority, the emphasis is on teaching, teaching and preaching always precedes the signs and wonders. And you kind of see how that plays out because he’s he’s teaching, says in the beginning of verse 17. And then it mentions the power of the Lord who is with him to heal. Teaching comes first, then the healing.
And part of the reason for that is because those miracles that Jesus worked were to validate and to confirm the truth of his message. By this time, again, Luke is vague in terms of the timeline, but by the time this event happened, Jesus’ reputation had spread far and wide such that It mentions scribes and Pharisees come, and not just from Galilee. Jesus had been ministering primarily, perhaps exclusively, in Galilee.
That’s up in the north. That’s far north of Jerusalem. That’s out in the backwoods, in the sticks, as we might say. He’s not ministering in the center of activity in Israel, down in Jerusalem. He’s up in Galilee. Word has gotten around such that scribes and teachers of the law are coming, not just from all around Galilee, but also from Judea, from Jerusalem itself. These people have come out to hear him as critics.
And then someone else came to him. Men brought their friend Jesus. And it’s no mystery. There’s no guesswork here. Clearly what their desire was is that by bringing their friend to Jesus, they were hoping that he would heal him. That’s what they were looking for. But Jesus has another agenda item to put first. He has something else. to take care of before he heals.
And we see that in verse 20. Because after these men do everything that they did to bring their friend to the Lord Jesus, when Jesus sees him, when he sees their faith, what does he say? Rise? No, first he says, man, your sins are forgiven you. Again, it was as obvious to Jesus, no doubt, as it would be to any of us that what they hoped he would do was heal their paralyzed friend. But his priority is on forgiveness.
That comes first, because it’s more important. And so Luke relates this event to teach us, to teach us about our greatest need. Because what’s happening here, as this man is lowered down through the roof, right in front of Jesus, is Jesus is performing what we might describe as a sort of redemptive triage. You know, when you do triage in an emergency room, you find out what’s the most important, what’s the most critical problem here, and you address that first.
And Jesus is doing triage on this poor, paralyzed man. It brings to our minds, ought to bring to our minds the fact that yes, we have many different afflictions in life. There are many, they’re varied. As human beings living in a fallen world, we have immense needs. and the problems we face in the world, in our lives, in our homes, in our bodies.
They’re daunting at times, but far and away, far and away, the greatest problem that mankind has is the problem of sin. And in fact, sin is the root cause of all of our other miseries. Sin is the root cause of all of our other problems. Not that there’s always, I’m not saying that there’s always a one-to-one or lineal relationship between a particular sin and any given problem in our lives, but the whole general problem of sin is what brought all the misery upon this earth in the first place. Sin is the root cause of all hardships that we face.
And what are those? What is the world facing now? What problems are out there? What issues and troubles plague us and the human race? Well, there are wars going on. War is a terrible thing. all kinds of other hardships. There’s disease. We prayed for many this morning, some of whom are experiencing relief from sickness and disease and physical maladies, but some of whom don’t see any relief in sight. There’s unrest throughout our nation throughout the world. There’s crime. There’s corruption in government, corruption in business, And it’s good to try to address the problems of the world, but addressing these things is like treating symptoms but not treating the disease.
The disease at the root of all maladies in this present age is human sin. Sin is mankind’s greatest problem. But praise be to God, there’s a solution to that problem. That brings us to our second point. Jesus is the only solution to man’s sin problem. The solution isn’t a thing. The solution isn’t a plan or an idea. The solution is a person. The Lord Jesus Christ.
And the friends of this paralytic knew they were certain that if they could get their friend to Jesus, that Jesus could help him. They believed that with all their hearts. What do we call that? We call it faith. These men had faith. And Jesus, the text says, saw. their faith.” Have you ever wondered what that really means? What is Luke saying when he said Jesus saw their faith? For many years I taught Mark’s gospel to 11th graders at a Christian school. When I talked about Jesus seeing the faith of these men who brought their friend, I focused on the divine aspect of it, that Jesus as the God-man could actually see that which is unseen, i.e., their faith.
But there’s both elements. There’s two different elements, I could say. And there was a Reformation-era Anglican minister by the name of John Boyce, and this is what he said about this. He said, as God, speaking of Jesus, as God, he saw their faith as he saw the thoughts of the scribes. And as a man, he saw their faith by their works. Just like what James says, show me your faith without works and I’ll show you my faith by my works. The works of these men who believed strongly enough to take their friend and put him on a cot and carry him to Jesus showed their faith. They brought their friend to him. And in the face of obstacles, in the face of difficulty and setback, they didn’t retreat in despair or discouragement. They doubled down.
Houses in the ancient Near East often had flat roofs. And there were usually staircases on the outside of the house by which a person can get up on the roof. So these men just took their friend up. done a lot of reading and maybe you have too about construction in those days, what the roofs were made of how they were made. No need to get down into the into the nitty gritty of that. The point is they made a hole in the roof somehow, however much or however little work was involved in that they did it.
They interrupted Jesus Bible lesson to lower their friend down in there. They did it because they were convinced that Jesus had authority to heal. They’d heard that he’d done it many times before, and they believed he could do it for their friend. And Jesus used this event to prove that he had authority to forgive. He spoke to the paralytic.
He said in verse 20, man, your sins are forgiven you. That might sound a little funny, that’s really a literal rendering, and it’s fine. And in modern English, we use the word man in lots of different ways. It’s a very slang, informal way of addressing somebody. So you could actually maybe better read this as Jesus saying, friend, your sins are forgiven you. That’s the kind of address. Jesus is making, and he’s making an authoritative declaration. He doesn’t say, in the name of the Father, your sins are forgiven. He just declares it of his own intrinsic authority. Friend, your sins are forgiven you.
And that’s the point at which the scribes and the Pharisees begin to question. They begin to criticize. They begin to accuse. Who is this who forgives sins? Speaking blasphemies. Only God can forgive sins. Well, they’re kind of overplaying their hand here, perhaps, because the fact is, even under the old economy, priests and prophets could pronounce forgiveness in God’s name. They weren’t. conveying it themselves or in their own authority, but they could pronounce forgiveness of sins in God’s name.
I mentioned to a couple of you some of my readings recently in the book of Leviticus and how something that’s jumped out at me to me in my reading through Leviticus this time, in a way that it hadn’t in the past, is how often after the description of any given sacrifice, all the details about what you do to the animal, what you do with its blood, what you do with its parts, at the end of section after section, you read the words, and he shall be forgiven. So under the Mosaic law, you took your sin offering to the tabernacle, the animal was slaughtered, the blood was thrown against the sides of the altar, flesh was burned on the altar. And then Leviticus says, he shall be forgiven. And it was the duty of the priest to declare that, to proclaim those words of pardon, words of comfort.
Ministering in God’s name, the priest would tell the person, your sin is forgiven. Prophets could do that as well. And a clear and sterling example of that is when the prophet Nathan went to David after his great sin with Bathsheba, confronted him, and then David said, I have sinned against the Lord. And what did Nathan say immediately after that? The Lord has taken away your sin. So, on occasions, prophets were authorized to declare forgiveness of sins.
Priests were, as part of their priestly duty. But these scribes were accusing Jesus of presuming to forgive on his own authority, which is why they say what they do in verse 21. Who is this who speaks blasphemies? This man is blaspheming because only God can forgive sins. So Jesus responds by issuing a challenge. Look at it with me again.
Why do you question in your hearts which is easier, to say your sins are forgiven you or to say rise and walk? And it’s noteworthy that both of those things, in terms of the doing of them, both are impossible for any mere man. No one has the capacity to give this paralytic the ability to walk. And certainly no one has the authority to forgive his sins. No mere man has that. Superficially, it might be easier to say your sins are forgiven because there’s no way to prove or disprove that it’s actually a fact.
Whereas to say to someone, rise, take up your bed and walk, if it doesn’t happen, then you’re obviously a charlatan. But in reality, in reality, it is far easier to heal than it is to reconcile a sinner to a holy God. And as our medical technology progresses, and nowadays we can fix things, we can, by human medicine, through the blessing of God, we can heal things that in generations and ages past were uncurable. We can do things like that our medicine, by God’s grace improves gets better, but never, never will there come a time when any achievement of man is able to atone for sins. Jesus offers evidence that he has intrinsic authority to forgive sins. And so he claims to himself the very thing that the scribes kind of unfairly accused him of.
Verse 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. He wasn’t merely saying, God forgives sins. He wasn’t merely saying, I announce forgiveness in the name of God. His assertion was very plainly this, I have authority on earth to forgive sins. And here’s how I’ll prove it.
And he says to the man, rise. If Jesus were a mere man, then to say your sins are forgiven, especially to say what he said in verse 24, would be blasphemy if he were a mere man. For him to forgive sins, no one can take that prerogative to himself. He showed this sign to prove that he is more than a mere man.
If he can heal, he can forgive. If he can do the one, he can do the other. That’s why we read and even sang Psalm 103, because in verse three, it says, it’s the Lord who forgives. It’s the Lord who heals all your diseases. He’s the one who forgives all your iniquity. He does both the one and the other. And because he’s the only one who can, and he’s the one who does, he’s worthy of all the glory. And that’s our third point. All glory for our salvation belongs to God alone. The paralytic, it says in verse 25, immediately rose, rose up before them, picked up what he had been lying on and went home, glorifying God.
Back in October of 2024, when Hilary and I visited you for the first time, you may remember I was walking with a cane, because just a couple of months prior, I’d had hip replacement surgery. And after hip replacement surgery, my hip was as good as new, except for the fact that it took me some time to get my strength up and be able to walk.
So I used a walker for a while. Then I graduated to a cane. I was in the process of graduating from the cane while we were here. I remember that because I kept forgetting it and leaving it places. So I must have been getting better. But the point is, it took months for me to go from the operating table to being able to walk like a normal human being. This man, from being a paralytic, got up, took what had been carrying him, and carried it away. Instantly, immediately.
So he went home glorifying God. He may not have had a clear understanding of Christ’s divine nature. But he did understand that the glory belonged to God alone. And then the crowd joined in in glorifying God, as we see in verse 26. They were amazed. Amazement gripped them, seized them all, and they glorified God. Now, when it says amazement seized them all and they glorified God, that all probably didn’t include the Pharisees or the scribes. But most of those assembled were understandably gripped with amazement. They were seized with astonishment, filled with fear, as the New American Standard renders it. So you see, no glory goes to the paralytic for his faith. No glory goes to his friends who made the effort to carry him to Jesus. All the glory goes to God for this healing. All the glory goes to God for our salvation.
And I want you to consider a few things as we close. First of all, the earnestness of this man’s friends, the paralytics friends, their earnestness in bringing him to Jesus is an example to us in our prayers for our unsaved loved ones. Think of that. when you go before the throne of grace, whether we do it together in the congregation, or whether it’s on Wednesday night when we pray together, or whether it’s when you pray in your families, or when you pray alone in your secret place, your prayer closet, when you plead before God for the salvation of an unsaved loved one, an unsaved friend, an unsaved coworker, you’re like the friends of that paralytic.
You’re carrying your friend to Jesus. And I know many of you have been praying for certain people for many, many years, and you haven’t seen them budge spiritually. So let me make a suggestion. Imagine this paralytic being carried by his four friends. And whoever that one is that you love so much, who’s so dear to you and you’ve been praying for, ask three other friends to pray with you specifically for your unsaved loved one. And you and those other three can be like four friends of this paralytic carrying him to Jesus.
I can’t guarantee that that will immediately or ever lead to the loved one’s salvation. But I would encourage you, just from the example of this text, recruit assistants in your prayers. I volunteer. I’ll pray for anybody you want me to, just tell me, and I’ll join you in carrying whoever it is to the foot of the cross. Look at the zeal of these men.
They had this initial disappointment. They wanted to take their friend to Jesus, but there’s so many people they couldn’t get to him. But it didn’t stop them. It didn’t deter them. That’s a reminder to us to keep praying. Keep pointing sinners to Christ. Persist in your evangelism. and see their love. They carried their friend. And we can carry others to Christ in prayer. Remember, Jesus saw their faith, not just the paralytic’s faith. It’s very specific in all three gospels that tell us this story. It says Jesus saw not his faith, Jesus saw their faith, the faith of the paralytic and the men who are carrying him. So your faith, you have no idea how your faith could be used to bless somebody. How your faith and your prayer of faith might be the instrument in our Father’s hands to bring someone to salvation. So keep praying. Here’s another thing.
The helplessness and the inability of this paralytic is an example of all mankind’s total inability in sin. And we talk about the doctrines of grace, and we refer to total depravity. Sometimes total depravity is referred to as total inability. Doesn’t quite catch the whole scope of that doctrine, but we’ve referred to it as total inability because man can’t do anything to save himself.
This man could never have gotten to Jesus without the help of others. He needed his friends to carry him. And similarly, no one can come to Christ unless someone carries him, drags him. And you do that through prayer. And ultimately, it’s the Holy Spirit who draws, ultimately the Holy Spirit who drags men and women and children to the Father.
And sinful man’s condition before God is even worse than the condition of this paralytic, isn’t it? It’s even worse. Because the paralytic at least wanted to be healed. Sinners lack not only the ability to come to Christ, but they don’t have any desire to. In their flesh, apart from the operations of the Holy Spirit, they reject Christ. They even hate him. They need a change of heart before they can ever even desire to come.
But praise God, the Lord Jesus is also the great heart surgeon. He can change hearts. He does that. And that’s what we need to pray for unbelievers is God will change their hearts. So do you see how the experience of the paralytic shows us, first of all, that Jesus is compassionate, that he’s ready, and he’s willing to forgive, but also that Jesus is able, he has the authority to forgive sins. And remember last time, we looked at the experience of the leper. And the experiences of the leper and the paralytic we’ve seen today, their experiences go together, pointing us to the greatness of Christ, the greatness of our Savior. The experiences of the leper show us that Jesus is willing to save. The experience of the paralytic show us that he’s able to save the Lord Jesus Christ has authority to forgive sins.
Let’s pray. Thank you, Heavenly Father. For providing for us a Savior who has authority to forgive sins, we thank you, O Lord. For his shed blood, we thank you for Christ and his death. In our behalf. We thank you that he went willingly to the cross for us, that he was willing and compassionate, ready to save, and thank you that his blood was effectual, is effectual, for all who put their trust in him. Thank you that he has authority to forgive sins, and thank you that by his shed blood, he has the power to do it. We thank you and we praise you in his name, amen.