If you have a Bible, I invite you to turn to Mark chapter two. For our sermon today, we're gonna be looking at verses one through 12. It's probably a familiar story, but I'm gonna read through the passage and pray, jump right into the sermon. Hear now the word of God starting in Mark chapter two, verse one. And 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 that? 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, so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, we never saw anything like this. Thus ends the reading of God's holy, inerrant word. May its truth be ever written on our hearts. Let us pray. O Lord, we come before you thankful that you have spoken in scripture. Lord, turn our eyes to see you, our ears to hear you, and our hearts to know you. O Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be ever pleasing and acceptable in your sight. O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen. Jesus changes lives. Do you believe that? Some of you might not, and that's okay. If you're here today and you don't believe this whole Jesus thing, you're just trying to figure it out, we're glad you're here. Let me just say that in the last chapter, in Mark chapter one, we saw Jesus cast out demons, heal the sick, and cleanse a leper. You see, Mark is trying to show us that Jesus changes lives. And he isn't presenting this as some fairy tale or some moralistic parable to get a good message out of. Mark himself seems to be writing these as historical events that actually happened. And here he does it again. This is the story of a paralytic man being healed. A man who couldn't walk or stand of his own accord has his life changed by Jesus. Jesus gives him the ability to walk. Jesus heals him. We have to understand that part of the Christian understanding of Jesus is that Jesus changes lives. We all know people who have had their lives completely changed by an experience with Jesus. For example, many of us in this room know Julie Brandt. Julie Brandt was addicted to drugs and alcohol when she had a life-changing experience of Jesus. And now she's sober, she's following Jesus, she's working as a parole officer and has been helping to lead Baxter Church of the Way. Julie is an example of someone whose life has been changed by Jesus. I know people who have been brought out of slavery by Jesus. I know people who have been brought out of addiction and mental illness by Jesus. I know people who have been cured of cancer and cured of AIDS. I know people who have left same-sex relationships and people who return to their spouse after 15 years apart, all because of Jesus. There is story after story after story of people who have been changed by Jesus. People who the only reasonable explanation for what happened in their life is they began to know Jesus. I personally can relate to many of these stories in my own way, because Jesus changes lives. But according to this text, the important thing is not that Jesus heals the sick or the paralytic. The really important thing is that Jesus forgives sins. Look at what Jesus says to the Pharisees in verse 9. He says, which is easier to say to the paralytic, your sins are forgiven or rise up and walk. It's certainly easier to say your sins are forgiven. You don't need to do anything to prove it. It's not like there's a tally mark above our heads or a cosmic search engine to tell if someone's actually cleared of their sins or not. But Jesus wants you to know for certain that he has the authority to forgive sins. And it's really easy to see that this man can't walk. It's really easy to see that this man's a paralytic being carried in on a mat. So according to verses 10 and 11, the reason why he heals the paralytic, he tells us in verse 10, so you may know that the son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins. The reason Jesus heals the paralytic wasn't to give him a better life. It was to prove that he could forgive sins. The reason why Jesus changes anyone's life isn't to just give them a better life, but to prove that Jesus has the authority to forgive sins. Let me say this, Jesus absolutely changes lives. He can cure sickness and take away cancer. He can bring victory to the addict and give strength to the brokenhearted. Jesus can absolutely change lives. But that doesn't mean he will. Because for Jesus, it's not ultimately about our temporal good. It's about our sin. We need to understand that the real problem we face is our sin. You see, sin is rejecting God and the world that he created, and therefore it's not being or doing what his law requires. Sin isn't just doing bad things or being a bad person, but sin is rejecting God and his good design. It is thinking you know better what is right or what is good for yourself over what God has said. Sin can be good things taken to an extreme. Sin can be something that society says is totally normal and okay. Sin can even benefit you, at least for a while, or at least it may seem like. Sin can be eating the fruit God said would kill you, or lying to protect someone's reputation. Sin can be working too many hours at a job you love and neglecting your family, or sin can be spending too much time with your family and not working. Sin can be hating another or loving something other than God too much. Sin can be all sorts of things that go against God's design for the world. And scripture teaches that the wages of sin are death. Because of our sin, we actually deserve God's eternal judgment. And so if Jesus really changes lives, if Jesus really came to fix the world, to help people, then he has to do something about that, right? If our biggest problem is actually sin, if our biggest problem is actually rejecting God and His good design, then if Jesus really is going to save us, He has to do something about that. He has to do something about sin. And really, that's what all of Jesus' ministry is about. Jesus came into the world to save sinners, says 1 Timothy 1.15. The reason Jesus came is to actually put an end to sin in our lives and to give us new life, eternal life in him. The reason Jesus came into the world was to change lives. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. But whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. Jesus changes lives. So in this text, we have this story of Jesus, not just healing the paralytic, but forgiving his sins. That's what this story is. The bold header in most of our Bibles that editors put there later says something to the effect of Jesus heals the paralytic. That's what this story has been known as for nearly 2000 years. If a pastor or someone you know mentions Jesus healing the paralytic, this is the story that's supposed to come to your mind, right? But here's the thing. The story's about 12 verses long and only about three of them really have to do with healing the paralytic. Like half of verse three mentions the paralytic being carried in. And then the end of verse 10, Jesus begins to speak to the paralytic through verse 11. And in like the first half of verse 12, the paralytic gets up and walks away. This story that's called Healing the Paralytic is only like one quarter about the paralytic. So what is Mark really focusing on? Well, the beginning and end of this story focuses on the crowd of people gathered to hear from Jesus. Then Mark kind of draws your attention to three little vignettes in the larger cloud. Mark focuses on how three different groups of people respond to Jesus. It's about how the crowd responds. In this passage, we see these four friends making their way through the crowd in order to get the paralytic man to Jesus. Then we see the Jewish scribes and how they respond to Jesus. And then we briefly turn to the paralytic and how he responds to Jesus. That's really what this passage seems to be about. It's not so much about the paralytic man being healed, it's about how different people respond to Jesus. How the crowd responds to Jesus. And it seems to me the reason Mark highlights these three responses, these three groups of people, is because these are the same kind of responses you have any time people gather around Jesus. Here today, we have a small group of people gathered around Jesus and his teaching right here at Baxter Congregational. And I'm inclined to think that even in this little crowd, we're going to have all three of these responses here today. A couple of weeks ago, I was at a Christian conference with over 6,500 people from over 50 different countries. People gave a lot of time and money to go to this thing and talk about Jesus. And I believe in that room, there were all three of these responses. Every church event, every Bible study, every family dinner, wherever Jesus is proclaimed and the word of God is talked about publicly, I believe you will see all three of these responses. So I want us to work through how the friends respond to Jesus, how the scribes respond to Jesus, and how the paralytic man responds to Jesus. I think you'll see in these three responses who you should be, who you shouldn't be, and who you are. Who you should be, who you shouldn't be, and who you are. So first, we see who we should be, and I think you'll find you should be like the friends. The friends are an important part of this story. In verse three, Mark highlights these four men carrying the paralytic. and they can't make it to Jesus because the crowd is so big, so they climb up on the roof and carry him up there, and they pull up the roof and lower the paralytic man right in front of Jesus. And then notice what it says in verse 5. It says, Jesus saw their faith. It uses the word their. This isn't singular, this is plural. So this isn't speaking of the faith of the paralytic, it's speaking of the faith of the friends. The friends who believe so much that Jesus could heal this man, that they carried him there. And they didn't just carry him, but they climbed up on a roof, dug through it, and lowered their friend right in front of Jesus. And because of the faith of the friend, Jesus forgives the paralytic's sins. Brothers and sisters, according to this text, the example of these friends is an example of faith. And since we're saved by faith, this is fundamentally what it is to be a Christian. You see, according to Hebrews 11, verse 1, faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the knowledge of things unseen. Which is to say, biblically speaking, faith isn't just knowing God and what he promises, but faith is being so convinced of it that you live differently in light of it. And that's what we see the friends doing here. These friends know of this Jesus and they know he can heal their friend and they don't just know it, but they are so convinced that they live differently in light of it. They so much believe that Jesus can heal their friend that they bring their friend to Jesus. This is a model of every faithful Christian. Like if you really believe that Jesus changes lives, why would you not bring your friends to Jesus? If you believe that people are dying and going to hell and the only way to be saved is to believe on Jesus, why would you not tell everyone you know? If this is true, how could you not tell everyone? The truth is the reason you're not telling others about Jesus is because you lack faith. It's not because you're scared. It's not because you don't know enough. Deep down, it's because you don't believe that Jesus changes lives. But here we see what true faith actually looks like. The kind of faith that brings others to Jesus. Because this is a faith that believes Jesus changes lives. This is the kind of faith we should all have. So many of us, though, are like the scribes. And guess what? We shouldn't be like the scribes. You see, we like to gather together and hear sermons and have nice religious talks. We spend our days thinking about how to be a good moral person, how to live our best life. The scribes are religious people. They came to hear this man teach. But when faced with who Jesus is, they question it. And so, too, we like good teaching that doesn't tell us who Jesus really is. We don't want to have to be faced with the truth. And when we hear it, we question it in our hearts like these scribes. We like to look like good, upstanding citizens, yet when we hear the truth that we are sinners and that Jesus forgives sins, we say, how can that be? I'm not that bad, am I? I don't really need Jesus to save me. I just need him to give me a better tomorrow. I need him to give me hope for the week ahead. I just want someone to put me into a better life, but that isn't what Jesus came to do. And notice that these scribes are in the crowd, taking up space that could have been used by the friends, bringing someone to Jesus. But here's the real reason that you shouldn't be like the scribes. The scribes were questioning in their hearts. They wanted to preserve a veneer of godliness. They wanted people to think well of them. And we do the same. We don't really tell people about our struggles. We don't want to seem weak or inferior or stupid. We don't want to admit that we actually think that this might all be a fairy tale. Or worse, that this whole thing is just really about us. We don't want to admit that we don't really believe that Jesus changes lives, because guess what? We're a church. It might make us look bad. Let me just say, if you're here today and you've been going to church your entire life, but you don't really believe that Jesus changes lives through his life, death, and resurrection, you're no better than the scribes in the text. Either the Bible is right about who Jesus is and what he came to do or it's not. But if you want to keep pretending, if you want to keep being religious to make yourself feel better, understand you are no better than the scribes. But most of us are not actually like the scribes or the friends. You see, you should be like the friends and you should not be like the scribes, but most of us are like the paralytic. You're the person who needs to be changed by Jesus. And what we often don't realize is none of us get to Jesus on our own. In some capacity, you must admit the only reason you are here at church today is because at some point in your life, someone told you about Jesus first. You didn't just wake up one day and decide, I should learn more about this Jesus guy. No, for most of us, our parents or grandparents dragged us to church when we were younger, and we sat under sermons or went to Sunday school, and we first there heard about Jesus. Some today might hear about it online, and for some of us, we might have friends like the paralytic who believed that Jesus could change us and brought us to hear more, brought us hoping that Jesus would change our lives. The same is also true for every person who brought any of us to Jesus. Someone brought them to Jesus and someone brought the person who brought them to Jesus. And I think this forces us to realize something of God's eternal plan. Because ultimately, no one came to Jesus all on their own. Like the paralytic, we had to be carried to him. We are stuck in our sins and trespasses. And scripture seems to suggest that we can't come to him on our own. Like the Israelites were slaves in Egypt, they could not just decide to be free. They could not just choose to be free. But God, by his grace, called us out. What we need to realize is that we didn't just decide of our own accord to choose this whole Jesus thing. No, God calls us to himself, lifted us in the power of the spirit and brought us to the very presence of Jesus. He made the truth of Jesus irresistible to all those who believe in him. He lifts us up on eagle's wings and brought us into his very presence. You see, Jesus changes lives by bringing us to himself. And that's ultimately what needs to happen. We are the paralytic who needs to be changed by Jesus. We are the person who can't come to God on our own, so he made a way for us by being born of a virgin, living a perfect and sinless life, dying on a cross as a sacrifice for our sins, and rising again, conquering the powers of sin and death. That whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. That whoever calls upon the name of Jesus should be saved and have new life in him. So that whoever believes will be changed. So let me go back to the original question. Jesus changes lives. Do you believe that? If we were to be completely honest, for most of us here today, the answer would be no. But pastor, I believe that Jesus changes lives. I believe that he healed the paralytic. I believe he forgives sins. I believe what you just said and what the Bible teaches. No, you don't. At least not like this. At least not like you see in this text. I know this because if you did, you would tell people. You would bring people to Jesus just like the friends did. Most of us know Jesus changes lives, but we don't really believe it. If you have a friend who has a medical problem and they need a doctor, you don't just Google a list of doctors or open up the phone book and just read them the list of doctors. That isn't believing in the doctor, that's just knowing that they exist. If you really care about your friends, you recommend your doctor or your sister's oncologist or your friend's podiatrist. If you really care about your friends, you don't just recommend a doctor that you know exists, but you recommend a doctor that you believe in. If you really care about your friends, you're going to tell them about a doctor that you know changes lives. And the same is true for Jesus. A lot of us know Jesus exists. We even know what he came to do. But if you really believe it, you would tell others. If you actually believe that Jesus changes lives, you would tell everyone. And if you're being honest, the reason you don't really believe that Jesus changes lives, the reason why you don't tell others about Jesus is because Jesus hasn't changed your life. Brothers and sisters, if a doctor changes your life, you tell everyone. If someone saves you from being hit by a car, you praise them to everyone you know. How much more should you tell about He who saves you from the pit of hell? How much more should you tell everyone about He who restores your relationship with your Creator? This isn't crazy, eccentric Christianity for a special few. This is normal everyday Christianity. A Christian is someone so changed by Jesus that they put all their trust, all their faith, all their hope in him. And it impacts everything they do. Telling others about Jesus is the natural result of being changed by Jesus. And being changed by Jesus is the natural result of knowing you've had your sins forgiven. That's what Jesus came to do. Jesus changes lives. Has he changed your life? Do you believe that? Please pray with me. Oh Lord God, we thank you for Jesus. that you sent your only begotten son into the world to change lives and we pray change our lives from the very inside out. Turn our hearts and minds to you and may we give up everything else because nothing is greater than the sweet joy of knowing our Lord and Savior. Lord, make us faithful friends who are willing to carry others to Jesus himself, knowing that he can change lives and give us hope to be more like him all our days. We thank you, oh God, for what you have done and what you are doing. And we praise you in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.