Years ago, I used to work in the luxury hotel industry,
specifically in the hotel restaurants.
One of the things that I used to do for the main company that I worked
for was something like a troubleshooter or a consultant, that would evaluate a
troubled restaurant, and come up with a training program to revamp it’s service
so as to bring it up to the standards of the company.
And what I found to be helpful when I did this sort of work
was to try to take the restaurant concept down to the lowest common
denominator, so to speak. Boil the
purpose and the goals down to as small of a statement as possible. For instance, if I were doing a
McDonalds then it would be something like this: “to make a tasty, economical
hamburger and serve it as quickly as possible and make a reasonable profit.” Or something like that. But the point is to figure out the
essence of what the restaurant is trying to accomplish, to take it back to it’s
roots, and then everything that doesn’t contribute to that goal or that might
interfere with that goal you eliminate.
And when you build the restaurant around the purpose you will get
success. I found that many
restaurants build their buildings first, decorate them, staff them, and then
try to figure out what they are going to serve. That’s the wrong approach. If you want success, first figure out what it is that you’re
trying to accomplish and then build up from that. That’s what makes places like Chick Fil A such a
success. They have figured out how
to do one thing very well and everything they do compliments that goal. (I love Chick fil A!)
As I was studying this passage this week in preparation for
this message, I thought it might
be helpful to take this principle of finding the essence or the purpose in something and apply it to Christianity.
And so I ask you a rhetorical question today that perhaps you have never
asked yourself. Maybe you’ve been
busy in a religious building, and practicing religious works, and trying to do
a good job at it, but you really don’t know what it is that Christianity is supposed
to be accomplishing. So the
question is: What is the purpose,
or the essence of Christianity?
What is really the main goal?
Is the objective simply to get God’s blessing on our lives
so we can have a better life? Is
the goal to become a better person? Is it to avoid hell when we die? Is it to get into heaven one day? What is the goal of Christianity? Well, I believe the Bible teaches us
that the goal of Christianity is to reconcile men to God by the forgiveness of
their sins. The heart of Christianity
is the message of forgiveness of man’s sins. God reconciling man back to his
original state once enjoyed in the garden of Eden after creation. That is, that man is counted by God as
being holy, righteous, all that God calls good, by virtue of the
substitutionary atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ. That is the immediate goal of Christianity. There is another future goal, and that
goes even further than the original status of man in the garden, the future
purpose is the exalted status of man promised in the future eternal realm, when
men are changed to become like God, reaching the full maturity of body, soul
and spirit and thus able to become full heirs of the kingdom with Christ.
But for that to happen the primary goal of Christianity must
be to reconcile man with God through the forgiveness of sins. The message that
God will forgive all your sins if you repent and ask Him is the good news,
that's the gospel. Jesus came to preach that message and He came to make
forgiveness possible by His death on the cross. Forgiveness is the single most
important benefit that God can provide. Forgiveness is the door to all blessing.
Forgiveness is the door to eternal life in heaven. And so the matter of
forgiveness is the heart of the Christian gospel.
But you cannot preach the Christian gospel of forgiveness
unless you understand sin and its consequences. To understand that all men are
sinners, that all men are alienated from God, all humanity is headed toward
eternal hell where they will forever be punished for their sins and then to
understand that God by grace has devised a means by which He can forgive
sinners all their sins so they can escape judgment and enter into eternal glory of His heaven, that is the message
of the gospel, that is the good news. And any true preacher preaches that
message because that is the message that goes right through the story of
redemption, it is the story of reconciliation; God forgiving sinners.
Do you understand the word reconciliation? We are supposed to reconcile our
checkbooks, aren’t we? I never was
very good at it. But it’s where
there is an accounting done, where you take what you think you have in the
bank, and compare it to what the bank says you have. And the bank, I’ve found out the hard way, is always right. And so then you reconcile your account
of your money in the bank, to what the bank says you have in the bank. And that illustrates the essence of
reconciliation. We look at God’s
Word and discover what God’s standard of righteousness is, and compare that to
what we think our righteousness is, and then the Bible tells us that we have
fallen short of the glory of God.
Rom. 3:23: “All have sinned
and fallen short of the glory of God.”
All of our good works, or good intentions, have fallen short of what God
says is necessary for us to be made right with Him. And so there must needs be a restitution made that will
right our account with God. Yet
here is the conundrum, we have no means to pay for this debt. Isaiah 64:6 says
“all our righteousness is as filthy rags.” The debt is beyond our ability to
pay. But here is the good news,
the gospel - Jesus paid it all in full.
Paul calls this purpose of Christianity the ministry of
reconciliation in 2Cor. 5:18 “Now all these things are from God, who reconciled
us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation,
namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting
their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of
reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were
making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to
God. [God] made [Jesus] who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we
might become the righteousness of God in Him.”
So if forgiveness is the purpose of Christianity, then it is
necessary that as sinners we must recognize our need to be forgiven in order to
be reconciled to God. And as we
look at this story today, we see that there are two main groups of people that
Luke introduces us to. In Vs. 17 we see the first group; “One day He was teaching; and there
were some Pharisees and teachers of the law sitting there, who had come from
every village of Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem; and the power of the
Lord was present for Him to perform healing.” And then in the next verse we see the second
classification. V.18 “And
some men were carrying on a bed a man who was paralyzed; and they were trying
to bring him in and to set him down in front of Him.”
Now this is not a parable, it is an actual, historical
event. But there is a spiritual
lesson here that is seen in these two groups. On the one hand, you have the really religious people in the
Jewish culture coming out from all quarters to check out Jesus. They have already been seated in the
best seats of the house. The
Pharisees and lawyers were the legalists of the Jewish culture. They were focused on keeping the law to
the nth degree in their efforts to please God.
In the eyes of the Jews these Pharisees were the most
religious people in their culture.
Jesus said in another place that unless your righteousness exceeds that
of the Pharisees then you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. And these guys
practiced righteous deeds.
Furthermore, they were experts in scripture. They knew the scriptures backwards and forwards. They believed in the one true God of
Israel. They did good deeds and
did their best to keep the law. They worshipped God according to all the commandments. They
kept the Sabbath, from Friday evening to Saturday evening. They wouldn’t lift their finger to do
any work whatsoever, even kindling a fire or cooking a meal. They tithed of everything they made,
even to the point of tithing out of their herb garden a tenth of their mint,
dill and cumin. Most people would
think that if anyone was a candidate for Christianity, then these guys fit the
bill perfectly. And yet, they
weren’t saved, they had not been reconciled to God. Jesus called them in another place serpents like their father the devil.
Then you have the other group, which we know from the other
gospels was made up of four men plus this one man who was a paralytic. Nothing much more is said about
him. We don’t know his name, only
his condition. He was paralyzed,
most likely from his neck down.
It’s the type of paralysis that often comes from falling. It’s a common threat in surfing that I
often think about. I knew a man
named Bill Wise that lived here locally who fell forward on a relatively small
day surfing just a little ways down this beach, and hit his forehead in such a
way that it snapped his vertebrae and he was instantly paralyzed. He spent the rest of his life in a
wheelchair, tended to by his wife until he died just a few years ago.
Now as to this paralytic in the gospel of Luke we can be
sure that he wasn’t a Pharisee or a lawyer or scribe. He wasn’t a religionist. But after his accident I’m sure that he had a lot of time to
ponder his life and what he wished he could have done, and some things perhaps
he should have done. And one day
he hears that Jesus is just down the street teaching at a house, and he has
heard that Jesus can heal. This
man knows one thing for sure, his condition is hopeless. He cannot do anything for himself. He has no hope for the future. It’s a completely debilitating
condition that he has found himself in.
And all he knows is that there is hope in Jesus.
This man has four friends. And somehow or another these five men come up with a plan to
see Jesus. He is their only hope
for this poor paralyzed man. And
they are determined to bring their friend before Jesus. I can’t help but interject something
here. If you’re here today and you
claim to know the Lord, and you have unsaved friends or family, you need to go
get them and bring them to Jesus.
You don’t have to know all the answers yourself. You may not know how to lead someone to
the Lord or answer all the questions they might have about the Bible. But if you are really their friend you
will stop worrying about offending them and start inviting them to church to
hear the gospel. One day you are
going to stand before a holy God and see your friend standing there condemned
to hell for eternity and he is going to look at you and ask “Why didn’t you
tell me? If you really believed this was the truth, then why didn’t you drag me
even kicking and screaming to church so I might hear the truth and be saved?”
You know, we don’t hear a lot in the scriptures about a
disciple named Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. His main claim to fame was that he met Jesus, and then he
went home and got Simon Peter his brother and brought him to Christ. And look at what Peter ended up
doing. You might bring the next
Peter to Christ.
So there are two categories of people that have come to see
Jesus. There are the ultra
religious, self righteous Pharisees who on the exterior seem to be spiritual
and religious people. And then
there is this paralytic, desperate, helpless and hopeless. By the way, you notice that the
Pharisees are described as just sitting there. Just sitting there, bystanders, spectators, waiting for
Jesus to do something spectacular, or make some mistake, or something. But just sitting there. I think that churches all across
America today are filled with people who are just sitting there. They have a form of religion, but they
have denied the real power of Christianity to forgive sins. They have ulterior motives for
appearing religious. And so they
sit there waiting to be entertained.
Waiting for something that they can criticize later at the dinner
table. And their hypocrisy is
keeping those that want salvation away from the church, and away from the
saving truth of Jesus Christ. The unsaved can’t come in.
We’ve got this upside down mentality today that you need to
get your act together to come to church.
You need to put on your best clothes and be on your best behavior. And while I don’t have any problem with
dressing up, or reverence, know this;
the gospel is for sick people like the leper. It is for hopeless people, like the paralytic. The gospel is for people who need
deliverance from their enslavement to sin like the demonic. Jesus said in verse 32 of this chapter,
“I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance." Bring in the poor, bring in the sick,
bring in the despairing, there is hope in the gospel. It’s the only real hope for mankind.
Listen folks, you cannot be saved until you realize that you
are lost. I’m sometimes criticized
for preaching too much on sin, but only the right understanding of my sin
produces the right response. That
right response is to throw myself down at the foot of the cross and admit my
sin and my guilt, and call upon the Lord for mercy.
Jesus told a parable recorded in Luke 18:10 that illustrates
these two groups. He said, "Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a
Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and was praying this
to himself: 'God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers,
unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I pay
tithes of all that I get. But the tax collector, standing some distance away,
was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast,
saying, 'God, be merciful to me, the sinner!' "I tell you, this man went
to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself
will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted."
Another illustration is found in the book of Genesis. Cain and Abel both come to worship
God. And Cain brings the best out
of his fields as a offering of sacrifice to God. His brother Abel on the other hand brings a lamb for a
sacrifice. They both came to
worship God. Yet God rejected Cain’s offering and accepts Abel’s offering. See Cain’s offering was a prideful
offering of HIS best, but Abel’s offering was an offering for his sin. It was an offering that acknowledged
that he was unable to pay for his sin, that he was worthy of death, and the lamb was a symbolic substitute
in faith for the substitute that Christ would one day make on his behalf.
Now back to our text, the men bringing the paralytic are
unable to enter the house because of the crowd, so they climb on the roof and
tear open the tiles to let him down in front of Jesus. And the text says in verse 20,
“Man, your sins are forgiven you."
This was an astounding thing for Jesus to say. The Pharisees became indignant. V.21 “The scribes and the Pharisees began to reason, saying,
"Who is this man who speaks blasphemies? Who can forgive sins, but God
alone?" But Jesus, aware of their reasoning’s, answered and said to them,
"Why are you reasoning in your hearts? "Which is easier, to say, 'Your sins have been forgiven
you,' or to say, 'Get up and walk'? But, so that you may know that the Son of
Man has authority on earth to forgive sins,"—He said to the
paralytic—"I say to you, get up, and pick up your stretcher and go
home."
The Pharisees condemned themselves in their criticism. They said that no one has the authority
to forgive sins but God alone.
Their analysis was correct, but their problem was that they didn’t
recognize God was right in front of them.
Their problem was that Jesus overturned their system that they believed
made them righteous, and they could never confess that they were actually
sinners. They had worked too hard
at outward appearances for that.
So they were incensed at Jesus for claiming to be able to forgive sins
and to infer that they needed forgiveness.
But Jesus doesn’t leave it with them getting mad and
criticizing Him. But rather He
offers them proof that He has the power to forgive sins. He said, which is easier to say. They are both impossible for man to do,
either heal or forgive sins, both are impossible for man. But all things are possible with
God. It was however, easier to say
your sins are forgiven, because that is a divine transaction that happens in the
spiritual world and who can know?
But Jesus says, "But, so that you may know that the Son of Man has
authority on earth to forgive sins,"—He said to the paralytic—"I say
to you, get up, and pick up your stretcher and go home."
Which was the greater miracle? To forgive his sins or to heal him from paralysis? I would
say to you that the greater miracle is to forgive sins. We have our priorities so upside down
today. In the church today we
attribute fleshly things to spiritual things. The modern church puts all it’s emphasis on altruistic
charities, on providing physical needs, and yet is not providing the more essential spiritual things. We celebrate what we can see and feel,
and call it spiritual, and ignore the more weighty eternal things that are
found in the Word of God.
I was at a Bible conference a couple of years ago and a missionary
was talking about his work in Africa.
And in one village he gave testimony that when the gospel was preached
the whole village got saved. And
there were about a 1000 men at this conference and I heard perhaps one or two
amen’s at that announcement. Then
later on in the talk, the missionary claimed that a woman’s baby died during a
baptismal service and somehow or another, when they baptized the woman, the
baby came back to life. And the
whole crowd of 1000 men stood up and gave a standing ovation. A whole village gets saved and there
were only a few grunts, and one baby supposedly gets healed, and you get a 1000
people giving a standing ovation.
There is something wrong with that picture.
Jesus said, so you can know that I have the power to forgive
sins, take up your bed and walk.
And immediately the man was healed and went away glorifying God. Imagine that, his atrophied muscles
were instantly brought back to life.
There have been people who have been healed by doctors from some form of
paralysis or sickness who hadn’t walked in a long time, and when they are
healed the muscles no longer work right.
They have atrophied. And so
the person usually has to go through extensive physical therapy and work out
his muscles and actually relearn how to walk. But when Jesus heals this man he immediately gets up and
walks away. He is not only healed,
but he is fully restored.
But folks, don’t lose sight of the reason Jesus healed. He healed to prove that He was God,
because they knew that only God has the power to forgive sins. Healing was the easy part. Listen, it’s great to get healed, to
get delivered, but it’s more important to be forgiven, to be saved. You can be healed but not saved. You can graduate from a twelve steps
program and be delivered from alcohol or drugs and not be saved. You can go to hell cold stone sober. You
can have your cancer go into remission and not be forgiven, not be saved. Don’t miss the eternal looking for the
temporal. Jesus said it’s better
to go into heaven blind or lame, than to go into hell with eyes wide open and
walking.
Finally the last verse we have time for today, Luke 5:26 “They
were all struck with astonishment and began glorifying God; and they were
filled with fear, saying, "We have seen remarkable things today." Listen, when you come to realize
your hopelessness before God, when you are totally dependent upon His mercy to save
you, then you will be astonished at the things that He will do in you. He charges your sins against Jesus, and
transfers the righteousness of Jesus to your account. He makes you holy, righteous and justified (Just as if I never
sinned). He changes your desires,
He changes your attitude, and He changes your actions. And another hallmark of real
Christianity is a healthy dose of fear.
Not the fear of punishment, but a reverence for who God is and what He
has done. It says they were
filled with fear, which means awe and reverence.
And it's a necessary fear. It's a healthy fear. In fact, in
some ways it helps to produce a godly life. The awareness of God's presence,
the awareness of God's holiness, the awareness of God's power is the source of
great consecration. It's the source of holiness. Second Corinthians 7:1 says we
are to be "Perfecting holiness in the fear of God.” In Phil. 2:12 we are instructed to "Work
out your own salvation with fear and trembling." It's the basis of our
service to God. We are subject to one another in the fear of Christ, Ephesians
5:21. And it's the motive for our
evangelism, "Knowing the fear of the Lord we persuade men." 2 Cor.
5:11.
Listen, you’re either in one or two camps today, the camp of
the self sufficient, self righteous person like the Pharisees who didn’t think
that they needed forgiveness of sin, and went away offended and resentful. Or you can be in the camp of the
paralytic, hopeless and desperate for healing, and recognizing your hopelessly lost condition call
upon God for mercy. And God in His
infinite mercy and grace, offers you forgiveness of your sins, acceptance with
God, reconciliation, the greatest miracle of all. I hope you call upon Jesus today to be your Savior.
And if you’re already a child of God, then knowing the fear
of God, persuade men. Go out into
the highways and by ways and compel them to come in. Be like the paralytic’s friends, and bring someone to Jesus. Start this week by inviting your
friends to come to church.
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