Mark chapter 2, and we will be looking at verses 1 through 12. Hear the word of the Lord. And when he, that is when Jesus, when he returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home. And many were gathered together so that there was no more room, not even at the door. And he was preaching the word to them. And they came bringing to him a paralytic carried by four men. And when they could not get near him because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him. And when they had made an opening, they let down the bed on which the paralytic lay. And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, son, your sins are forgiven. Now some of the scribes were sitting there questioning in their hearts, why does this man speak like this? He is blaspheming. Who can forgive sins but God alone? And immediately, Jesus perceiving in his spirit that they thus questioned within themselves, said to them, why do you question these things in your hearts? Which is easier to say to the paralytic? Your sins are forgiven. or to say, rise, take up your bed and walk. But 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, rise, pick up your bed and go home. And he rose and immediately picked up his bed and went out before them all, so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, we never saw anything like this. Let us pray. Lord, grant us the humility to be teachable. Grant us the joy of seeing your power of forgiveness. And Lord, grant that we might know that forgiveness in our own lives. In Jesus' name, amen. In 1967, Johnny Erickson severed her spinal cord in a diving accident. She was 17 years old and she would never walk again. She would never have children, never use her arms, she would never give a hug, never climb a mountain, and she would never swim again under her own power. And I remember reading this story back when I was in college and the sadness I felt for her helplessness. You see, to look at your arms and not be able to move them, to see your legs and not to be able to take even one step. Think for a moment about the loss of mobility, the loss of the ability to take care of yourself, the loss of feeling in your body. This is the plight of a paralytic. Now I'm trying to help us step in to the world of the paralytic, to feel the paralytic's urgent need to be healed. Why? Because Jesus is using the condition of a paralytic to teach us about the seriousness of the nature of our sinful condition. He's teaching us about our need for forgiveness. You see, this passage draws a parallel. Paralysis, healing. Sin, forgiveness. You see, nothing happens by accident. God planned from all eternity that this crippled man would be brought to Jesus in precisely this way at this time so that Jesus might proclaim his authority to forgive sins as something so much greater so much harder and so much more wonderful than even healing of paralysis. You see, the greatest, most difficult thing ever accomplished in this universe is not any scientific achievement. It's not any kind of physical healing. The greatest, most difficult thing ever accomplished is forgiveness of sin. You see, we need to step into the desperate condition of the Paralytic so that we can feel something of the desperate condition of our heart captured by sin. And we need to sense the overwhelming joy of a paralytic set free from his crippled state. That we might feel something of the overwhelming joy of being set free from sin. See, sin has not just crippled your body. Sin has corrupted your soul. It has estranged you from your God. Sin has left you corrupt in every way, guilty before God, and destined for the pains of hell forever. Paralysis is temporary. The death of sin is eternal. As bad as paralysis was, this paralytic's greatest problem was not his crippled legs. His greatest problem was his sin that separated him from his God. And in your life, your greatest problem is not any kind of physical condition. It's not a job. It's not relationships. The greatest problem, the greatest need in your life is for healing from sin that separates you from your God. The central theme of this passage is forgiveness as a healing from sin. And we will look at three aspects of forgiveness taught in this passage. The prerequisite of forgiveness, which is faith. The one who has the authority to forgive sins, Jesus. And the results of forgiveness, which is glory to God. So first we consider the prerequisite to forgiveness, faith. Look with me back to verse 1. It says, and again, he entered Capernaum after some days, and it was heard that he was in the house. Immediately, many gathered together so that there was no longer room to receive them, not even near the door. And he preached the word to them. Now, Capernaum was a city on the north of the Sea of Galilee. It was right on the trade route from Damascus to the Mediterranean. And so it was a prosperous and a very populous area. And so we read in verse 2 that many gathered to see Jesus. And then it says that Jesus preached the word to them. And so we ask, well, what did he preach? And we can just look back at Mark 1, 15, tells about Jesus preaching in the area. And it says, Jesus came saying, the time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe the gospel. So Jesus was preaching what you've been waiting for, the kingdom of God, the coming of the Messiah. It's here right now. It is in your very midst. Therefore, repent and believe the gospel. And so the question is, what will the people do? Will the people repent and believe the gospel? And we know that many gathered. So many gathered that it was an overflow crowd. But we know something else. We know that although many gathered, few believed. We know this. Because even after Jesus had spent much of his three-year ministry in this very town, proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom. Towards the end of his career, he said this, from Matthew 11.23, and you, Capernaum, who are exalted to heaven, will be brought down to Hades. For if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. Capernaum, that prosperous city exalted to heaven by the very presence of the Lord, will be brought down. You see, this is the background. Many came, few believed. Many came out of curiosity. They wanted to know about this Jesus. But they did not come with an urgent need to be healed. They did not come with faith. Now in contrast to that, one man came with faith. One man came with an urgent need to be healed. Mark 2.3 says, then they came to him, bringing a paralytic who was carried by four men. And when they could not come near him because of the crowd, they uncovered the roof where he was. So when they had broken through, they let down the bed on which the paralytic was lying. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, son, your sins are forgiven you. And we can imagine this paralytic. He desperately wants to be healed. I'm sure his family and his neighbors loved him. And one day they heard that Jesus was back in town. And you can almost hear the conversation in their home. Jesus is here, we have to get to Jesus. And perhaps they rounded up some of the strongest of the neighbors to carry him. But of course, a paralytic being carried by four men, especially if they had any distance to go, they would be probably the last to arrive. And so they were. And they couldn't even get near to Jesus. You know, don't you love the determination of these guys? They're, here's the home, here's the crowd, and you know, we have to get to Jesus. And they look, the roof! We will go through the roof. And, you know, I love what it says in the Greek. It says, literally, they unroofed the roof. You know, there was no little manor. This was a roof that could be walked on, and they had to dig down through the clay and the thatch and the sticks and open up an opening big enough to let this paralytic down. And you can picture the people down below who were close to Jesus, and you know, suddenly you know, dirt and rocks start, and sticks start falling from the rough, and pretty soon a hole opens, and sunlight's coming in, and then it gets bigger and bigger, and a man gets lowered right down before Jesus. And in verse 5 it says, when Jesus saw their faith. And so we ask, what did Jesus see? And it said, well, He saw these folks believed. I mean, they would stop at nothing to get to Jesus. And it's interesting in the translation, it kind of puts the focus on the four men carrying the paralytic. But in the original language, word order matters, and the focus is entirely on a paralytic coming to Jesus. And of course, he came the only way he could, being carried. And I think we see here a model for how to come to Jesus. The paralytic came with a need. He did not just come out of curiosity. He came with a purpose to be healed. The paralytic came with hope. He clearly really believed that Jesus could heal him. Otherwise, why go to so much trouble? He came any way he could. if it meant being carried. And finally, he came to Jesus. There is one and one only source of hope and healing and forgiveness, the Lord Jesus Christ. So think about this for a minute. Does your faith look like this? Do you feel the desperate need to be healed by Jesus? so much so that you will stop at nothing to get to Jesus, even if you have to be carried. It's your hope in Jesus alone, that Jesus alone can heal you, can forgive your sins. You see, here's the picture. Real saving faith is not just intellectual. It's not just emotional. Real faith changes the way that you live. It's carried out in life. I think this is what James meant when he said, but someone will say, you have faith, I have works. Show me your faith without your works and I will show you my faith by my works. You see this paralytic, he could have heard about Jesus, but until he believed in his heart that Jesus could heal him. and did everything he could to get up and get to Jesus, he was not exercising saving faith. You see, this is the element in saving faith of trust. It is a casting of your life into the care of our Lord. And so when it says that Jesus saw their faith, it means he saw their hearts. He saw that their faith was real. The prerequisite to forgiveness is saving faith, the kind of faith that contrasts with mere curiosity, the kind of faith that will take you to Jesus. Now secondly, we consider the one who has authority to forgive sins, Jesus himself. Look with me to verse five. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic son, Your sins are forgiven you. And some of the scribes were sitting there and reasoning in their hearts, why does this man speak blasphemies like this? Who can forgive sins but God alone? So Jesus said, son, your sins are forgiven you. Forgiven. What is it to be forgiven? What does the Bible mean when it says your sins are forgiven? You know, sometimes we can be deceived by all the psychological, emotional ideas running around about forgiveness. But what does the Bible say? It says literally, your sins, ephemi, In the Greek, aphiomi, translated forgive. It means to release. It means to separate and send away. It means to banish. You know, when Jesus called James and John by the Sea of Galilee, it says they immediately, aphiomi, their nets. They immediately left. The nets were left there and they went to be with Jesus. They were separated. It says, when Jesus was in the garden of Gethsemane, says all his disciples, aphiomi him. That is, they all forsook him and scattered and left him alone. When Jesus healed the noble man's son, the fever aphiomi him. That is, the fever left him. Now, when you're healed of a fever and the fever's gone, well, it's gone. It's separated. The picture is this, God's forgiveness is real. When God forgives you, he separates your sins from you and he casts them away. You know, this is the same picture that we see throughout the Old Testament as well. Consider Micah 7.19. It says, God will cast all your sins into the depths of the sea. You see, when God forgives, he takes your sins, he casts them into the depths of the sea. Now, even today, with all of our technology, if you drop something in the very depths of the sea, it's pretty well gone. The picture is this. When God separates your sins and banishes them away, they are irretrievable. It's not like God's going to go get them tomorrow and bring them back. In Psalm 103, that we just sang, It says, as far as the East is from the West, so far has He removed our transgressions from us. Your sins are cast as far away as the East is from the West. And that's a long way. It's an infinite distance. It means that forgiveness is irrevocable. When they're as far as the east is from west, they are gone and they are no more. It's like that fever, they're gone. Isaiah 118, come now, let us reason together, says the Lord. Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. You know, you think of a cloth that's stained through and through, and that stain gets into every fiber. The picture is this, it doesn't matter how interwoven, how deep is that stain, God can separate it and cast away. It doesn't matter how deeply ingrained sin is in your life, God can separate that sin from you and he can banish it as far as the east is from the west. And the result is that he cleans you white as snow so that you might be in his very presence. You know, this book is amazing in its detail. Even in the Hebrew, the word for forgive, it's the word nasah, and it means to lift and to carry something off. Pretty amazing. You know, it says in Genesis 4, when God pronounced the judgment on Cain, Cain said, My punishment is too much to bear. It's the very same word. And yes, indeed, sin is way too heavy a burden to bear. So God says when He forgives your sin through Jesus Christ, that Jesus picks up that sin and He carries it away. And you know what it says? It says that He bears your sin on the cross. The picture is consistent from beginning to end. God's forgiveness is real. And I hope you see how impotent are all such emotional, psychological ideas of forgiveness when held up to God's real and actual forgiveness. Now let that soak in for a minute. Imagine yourself entirely separated from your sin. Cleaned white as snow. You know, that is an amazing picture. And that is the picture that you can know for certain by which God sees you. Because God has separated all your sin. He has cleaned you white as snow. I was once visiting with a woman in the last weeks of her life. And I was doing my very best to give her the assurance that comes in the gospel. And I told her, you know that when you believed that God took your sins and cast them into the deepest ocean, that he cleaned you white as snow so that you might be with him forever. And she said, oh, that's how he does it. And I just thought, yeah, that's how he does it. You see, when Jesus forgives your sin, he casts them upon the Lord Jesus Christ. Now it is clear that only God can forgive sins. The scribes at Capernaum were right. Who can forgive sins but God alone? Only God can remove your guilt. When David said in Psalm 51, against you and you only have I sinned and done this evil in your sight, he was not saying something new. The entire Old Testament sacrificial system testifies to the very same thing. You see, sin is a violation of God's law, and therefore only God can forgive sins. If we look at verse 7, Jesus says this, but immediately when Jesus perceived in his spirit that they reasoned thus within themselves, he said to them, why do you reason about these things in your heart? Which is easier to say to the paralytic, your sins are forgiven you, or to say, arise, take up your bed, and walk, but 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, rise, take up your bed, and go home. Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, your sins are forgiven you, or to say, rise, take up your bed, and go home? And the first thing we need to see here is this is about do not say. When God says, God does. When God said, let there be light, there was light. When God said to this paralytic, arise and walk, he got up and walked. When God says, your sins are forgiven you, your sins are forgiven. But which is easier? You see, forgiveness took God, coming as a man, living a perfect life. It took Jesus being tempted by Satan, rejected by men, bearing the wrath of God in our place on the cross, being crucified dead, buried, and rose again. Isaiah 53, beginning in verse 3, says this. He is despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Surely he has borne our griefs, and there is that word. He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. And yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement for our peace was upon him. And by his stripes, we are healed. The point of this question, which is easier, was to confirm an answer, that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins. You see, oh, forgiveness is so much harder and so much better. See, Jesus made a claim so unique to God himself that it could not be missed, and the scribes did not miss it, that he was claiming to be the very creator of the universe. God spoke the world into existence, but it took the Son of God dying on a cross to purchase forgiveness. Now, I have a question. If God can separate our sins and cast them away, what happens to the guilt and shame that weighs down our conscience when we sin? Can forgiveness really cleanse shame? In Exodus 34, God makes all his goodness pass before Moses. And he says this, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty? Now, wait a minute. It's only the guilty that need forgiveness. How can these go together? Now I have news for you, God does not clear the guilty. He does not just say, well that's okay, let's sweep it under the rug, we don't have to worry about that. God does something infinitely better. He forgives our sins. He actually removes the guilt and sin of shame through the death of Jesus. We can know that Our sin was actually paid for. And so God sets our conscience free. All of God's wrath was carried out on Jesus on the cross for our sin. And what does this mean? It means that there is no more wrath left for you. 2 Corinthians 5.21, for he made him who knew no sin to be sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in him. Romans 8.3, for what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh on account of sin he condemned. sin in the flesh. And so it says that God is both just and perfectly holy and righteous, and also the justifier of all those who call upon the Lord Jesus Christ. When God forgives us, not only, and it says this in John 1.9, not only does He forgive us and cast our sins away, He cleanses us from all unrighteousness. Now think about that picture again, how wonderful it is to consider yourself completely separate from your sin, pure in heart. See, this is the effect of God's forgiveness. Now, to take a little side note, what about forgiveness between us? between husbands and wives, between brothers and sisters. You see, if God's forgiveness is an actual separating of sin and casting it away, then in some sense, our forgiveness of each other must involve a separation of sin. We must be able to see each other without that sin that hurt me. Think about the healing that it is to know that God has forgiven you. And think about the healing that you can work in the life of another. When they know that you have separated their sin, that you no longer see them as just someone who hurt you, but that you see them forgiven by God, clean. That you see their heart the way God sees. You see, God leads with forgiveness. He doesn't say there, well, let's see how you do and then I'll let you know. No, God leads with forgiveness. And in our personal lives, we must lead with forgiveness if we hope to have any kind of peace with one another. It is among the most essential of Christian character. to be able to forgive, to be able to set aside a wrong done. You see, that's who God is. And he's conforming us to his image. You know, there's another reason why God can actually banish guilt and shame due to sin. And let me see if I can explain this. I correspond with a man in prison. And I told him a while back about another friend of mine who is 80 years old, has suffered a partial stroke, and he was taken advantage of by hackers. And much of his life savings was taken. And I told my friend in prison about this. And he told me later that he just sat down and wept. And why did he do that? He was thinking about his life. He was thinking about the effect of his sins on others. And how can that guilt and shame be removed? Well, first off, just what we were saying, that God takes our sins and casts them away. But there's another way. And you know that God is sovereign above all things, that God can work all things together for good. You know that restoration is good, but it's not always possible. But we know that God loves this person whom we have sinned against. We know that God can feel in, that God takes care of their life, says that God is a defender of widows, says he's a father to the fatherless. The point is, that God knows all things and he knows how to take care of people. And so he sets the prisoner free. There's always sorrow wherever there is sin, but God does not intend that you be held captive by past sins. He does not intend that you be held captive by shame and guilt. And that's why God describes that he didn't just kind of clear your sins, he placed them on Jesus. Jesus paid the price in full. He took the full wrath of God. And so we can rest assured that we have peace with our creator. Now, finally, the third point here is, what are the results of forgiveness? The results are the glory of God. In verse 12, it says, immediately he arose and took his bed and went out in the presence of them all, so that all were amazed and glorified God, saying, we never saw anything like this. You see, it is God's glory to redeem a people to himself. And this is important because we are the beneficiaries of forgiveness, but all the glory goes to God. You see, it is God, the Holy Spirit, that picks us up and carries us to the Lord Jesus. It is the Lord Jesus that died on the cross that we might be truly forgiven. It is God the Father who raised Jesus from the dead so that we might have eternal life in his very presence, cleaned pure, white as snow. All the glory goes to God and to God alone. Now let me conclude with this. Many came to see Jesus. They were curious, but they didn't come in faith and they didn't come to be healed. And in the end, they left just as they had come. And ultimately, Jesus pronounced their doom. But one man came in faith. He came with an urgent need to be healed. And this man left healed and forgiven. So the question is, which of these are you? Have you come to Jesus, crippled by sin, in urgent need of healing, in urgent need of forgiveness? See, Scripture tells us that all who call upon the name of the Lord will be of a certainty saved. And what does it look like to call on the name of the Lord? It looks like the tax collector, the sinful man who would not even lift his eyes up to heaven and call out, Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner. It looks like this paralytic coming with a desperate need to be healed. And you know, we've never faced the challenges of paralysis. but we do face the corruption of sin in our heart. You see the significance of the comparison in this passage. Paralysis affects the body, sin corrupts your very soul. Paralysis is temporary, sin is eternal. To be paralyzed would be a very terrible thing. but how much worse to be under the wrath and curse of God due to us for sin. To be healed of paralysis would be an amazing joy, but how much more wonderful to be forgiven of your sins. It is by God's grace that we can know forgiveness in our life. And so we can know the most wonderful gift that God has given. You know, I started this with the story of Johnny Erickson, and I'm sure that many of you know that she came out of the despair she felt and into joy, and she even looks back on her injury and thanks God for all he has done in her life. Now, how could she do this? Because even though her body is not healed, Her soul is forgiven. She has heard those most precious of all words. Your sins are forgiven you. You see, Jesus has authority to forgive sins. He has authority on earth. And that means in this place, in your life, in your very heart. Jesus has authority to forgive sins. And so we call on him. Amen. Let us pray. Our Father, it is a great joy to know that you have cast our sins away, to know that you see our hearts pure. And Lord, we long for the day when we can see the same. And Lord, we ask for your strength and your help that we might be a forgiving people. that we might feel the greatness of your forgiveness and that that might give us compassion and mercy to forgive one another, to live in peace and harmony before you. Lord, we pray that we might glorify you by proclaiming the greatness and the goodness of your forgiveness. In Jesus' name, amen.