So if Jesus were anything like most people think He was, His life would not have ended with the masses screaming for His blood. Jesus was rejected by His people, not only rejected, but violently rejected by His own people. And there's a reason for that, and all four of the Gospel writers, Jesus biography writers, go out of their way to show us that reason. And Mark does it here. Chapter 2, all of Chapter 2 and the first paragraph of Chapter 3 form a very distinct section in the book of Mark where Jesus collides with the Jewish authorities five times. So Jesus had lots of run-ins with the Jewish authorities, but Mark picks five of them out of the life of Jesus and just shows them, in this section just puts them one after another after another, all five of them in a row, to show us what started this conflict between Jesus and the religious authorities and how it progressed, why it progressed. This is important for us to know for two reasons. First, seeing how those authorities responded to Jesus, and then seeing the results of those responses, teaches us a lot about Jesus. It teaches us what the real historical Jesus was actually like. A lot of the way that Jesus revealed himself, introduced himself to us, is wrapped up in these responses that the Jewish authorities had. That's the first reason why it's important. Second reason these responses are important for you to know is because they give you a clearer picture, not only of Jesus, but of you. Whenever you read these accounts in the Gospels of different people responding different ways to Jesus, almost always the purpose of the Gospel writer is for you to ask yourself, where do I fit in that story? Which one of these characters is me? So in these five events Mark's going to show us, the first one is where we started it last week, it takes up the first 12 verses of chapter 2. And in these 12 verses he's going to show us three different parties, three different responses to Jesus. And the first one was the one we saw last week, faith. So that's verse 5, Jesus saw their faith. And how is their faith described? What's the definition of faith here? It's described in terms of action, right? They persisted, insistent, persistent faith. Remember, they were not going to be denied. They were going to get their friend to Jesus. So when they first arrive on the scene, it's just unbelievable. The crowd won't let them in. They got a guy on a stretcher, and the crowd won't get out of the way. It's like not getting out of the way of an ambulance. And so there's no way in. They can't get in. but they keep trying. It's amazing how much difficulty and hardship God allows when it comes to bringing someone to Christ. You'd think, okay, once someone's ready to come to Christ, God would just part the obstacles like the Red Sea and they'd be able to go in, but that's not the way it is. He lets hard obstacles stay in the way because obstacles are needed to filter out phony faith and real faith. And so these guys have to overcome obstacles. They try to get their friend to Jesus. The crowd won't let them, but they don't give up. So they hoist their buddy up onto the roof somehow, tear a hole in the roof above Jesus, lower the guy down right in front of Jesus. No record that they say anything, there's no comment about what they believed in their hearts, what they thought in their minds, what they knew. The only thing we get here is what they did. And that's how Mark introduces the whole concept of faith in the book of Mark. This is the first time the word faith appears in the book. and it's linked with action, just action. Faith is active trust in Jesus. Now, of course, faith involves believing things, knowing things, feelings, all that, definitely involves all that, but beliefs aren't really beliefs until they drive your actions, and so Mark introduces faith to us first in terms of active trust in Jesus. which is why that whole let go and let God philosophy just doesn't work. Because that phrase, let go and let God, implies that in order for God to work, you have to not work. And these people that teach that teach that the more human effort is involved, the less God's involved, or the less the Holy Spirit is involved. What we see in this passage is the exact opposite of that. The greater the faith, or greater faith results in more intense activity, not less intense. But the activity, what kind of activity is it? It's activity to get to Jesus. That kind of activity. The more I trust in Him to be good, the more I trust in Him to be powerful, the harder I'm going to work to get past any obstacles that's standing in between me and Christ. And so faith will power through that. There are scholars who have massive knowledge, advanced degrees, they know Greek, know Hebrew, they can clobber anybody in any theological debate, but they would never tear through a roof to get to Jesus. They wouldn't even walk across the room to get to Jesus. They have tons of Bible knowledge, but the knowledge is worthless because they don't use it to move toward Christ. I think if Mark were a seminary professor and he taught a class on faith, or taught a class on theology, probably he would spend a whole semester teaching all kinds of great doctrine, and then the final exam would be one question, how passionate is your prayer life? How much does this theology drive you to move towards Christ? That's the measure. So of these three responses to Jesus we see in this passage, the best one, the right one, is the first one, faith. That's clear from how Jesus responds to it, the results that come. Jesus sees their faith and He gives them, He gives this guy the greatest gift there is. He probably wanted healing, physical healing. He gets something way better than that. He gets forgiveness of sins. And following the pattern, and here's where we left off last time, following the pattern of most miracle stories, it would end right here. It would end right at verse 5. He gives the setting in verses 1 and 2. He talks about the person in need coming to Christ in verses 3 to 4. And then Jesus' response in verse 5, end of story. But it's not the end of the story. In fact, it's just where the story starts to get really interesting. All of that that we covered last week is really just to set the stage for the main point that Jesus wants to make, which is response number two, the hostility, the beginning of this hostility between Jesus and the scribes and Pharisees. So this is the second of the three responses to Jesus. First one is faith, second one, hostility. And that hostility begins in verse six, but only in their thoughts. Only in their thoughts. Verse 6, now some teachers of the law were sitting there thinking to themselves, why does this fellow talk this way? He's blaspheming. Who can forgive sins but God alone? That word translated thinking to themselves, it's actually the word for arguing. It's not a word to argue or to dialogue. Who are they arguing with? They're arguing with Jesus, right? But only in their own head. You ever done that before? You know how you can just dominate someone in an argument if you just keep it inside your own head? That's what they're doing. They don't have the guts to say anything out loud, but they're having these thoughts. Verse 8, "...immediately Jesus knew in His Spirit that this was what they were thinking in their hearts. And He said to them, Why are you thinking these things?" So just silently, inside their own minds, they think, why does he talk like that? And immediately Jesus says out loud, why do you think like that? So they must have just been thinking, wait a second, did I just say that out loud? I thought I was just thinking that. Jesus can see into everybody's heart in this whole passage, right? He knows what's in the paralytic's heart, the four friends, and now the scribes. Nobody but Jesus says anything in this whole account. Nobody talks in the whole thing until after it's over. During the event, nobody talks except for Jesus. And Jesus responds to each one. He responds to the paralytic, gives him full forgiveness. He responds to these scribes by saying, why are you thinking these things? So He rebukes them for their thoughts. If you think you're okay, because you have enough self-control to avoid saying what you really think. You know, you have some thought and you're like, oh, I'm glad I didn't say that. And you think, good, I dodged a bullet there. If that's what you think, then think again. Because whether you say it or just keep it inside, the measure of what you are is what's in your heart, right? Jesus is gonna teach us over and over and over. The measure of what you are is not mainly what you do and say, it's mainly what you think and feel and desire. So be very careful about your bad attitudes towards people that you don't like. Repent as quickly and as thoroughly as you possibly can when you have a bad attitude towards someone because it's a very serious thing to be a murderer, even if it's just in your attitudes or your thoughts. So as readers of the book, we get to see what nobody there on scene could see. We get to see the thoughts. Only we, the readers, and Jesus can see the thoughts of the scribes. But imagine what it was like for everybody else in the room. I mean they're just, they're sitting there listening to Jesus, all of a sudden there's some debris falling down, Jesus stops preaching, they're looking up, they see daylight, all of a sudden these guys are ripping this hole in the roof, the hole's getting bigger and bigger, you're watching this whole thing, they start lowering the guy down, and they're lowering him with ropes, so then, so The guys on one side go a little too fast, and he starts to slide off the pallet, and the other guys go back down, and he levels out, and then he finally gets down on the floor, and everybody breathes a sigh of relief, and they get him down. Nobody's speaking. Jesus looks down. Son, your sins are forgiven. Hey, why did you think that? went, just rebukes him. And if you're in the crowd you're thinking, did I miss something? What was that? And then Jesus just proceeds to destroy their mental argument. Imagine what it's like for the scribes who, I don't know if they're trying to keep a low profile at this point, they don't want to say anything, but Jesus just calls them out in front of everybody It'd be like if you were listening to a sermon at church and you just think, he says some point and you're like, eh, that's dumb, and then all of a sudden he's like, why did you just have that thought? He just singles you out. It'd be pretty unnerving, I think. And it says Jesus said this immediately. No sooner do they have these thoughts than Jesus knows them. And the second the thoughts cross their mind, Jesus responds to them. They can't even win an argument with Jesus in their own heads. And Jesus does this fairly often. He answers people's thoughts all through the Gospels. He does that. I just think it must have really freaked people out. So now these guys, the scribes, they're just up against the wall. They don't know what to say. They're shell-shocked. They're flummoxed. They don't say anything. They're reduced to absolute silence in the face of overwhelming authority from Jesus. So they look at Him with stunned faces and it's like Jesus is like, Yeah, this is happening. We're doing this right now, out loud. He won't let them keep this in their own minds because Jesus wants to make a point. So what was it that they were thinking? First they give their conclusion and then they give their reasoning for it. Verse 7, here's their conclusion. Why does this fellow talk like that? He's blaspheming. So that's the conclusion. They decide that Jesus is guilty of blasphemy. which is pretty serious. Now, we throw the word blasphemy around all the time, but at that time, punishment for blasphemy was death by stoning in the law. Leviticus 24, Numbers 15. You get convicted of blasphemy, you die. The Jews at the time were so afraid of just accidentally doing that, saying something blasphemous, that they just avoided saying the word God altogether, just to be safe. And if you skip ahead to chapter 14 in Mark, you're going to find that they ultimately end up convicting Jesus of blasphemy formally in a court of law and sentence Him to death. That's why they sentenced Him to death, for blasphemy. And the irony is that it was the Jews who were committing blasphemy. Mark uses the same word to describe what they were saying to Jesus on the cross in chapter 15. They were blaspheming Him. And in chapter 3, we're going to see pretty soon here that Jesus is going to warn these scribes and Pharisees about the possibility that their blasphemy is going to go so far it's going to become unforgivable. So the reader of the Gospel of Mark is having to deal with this question of who's blaspheming. Somebody is blaspheming. You can't escape that. Either Jesus is guilty of blaspheming for claiming to be God, or these men are guilty of blasphemy for not worshiping Him as God. But somebody's guilty. The debate about who Jesus is is high stakes. So they conclude he's a blasphemer because he's trying to do something that only God can do, forgive sins. He's blaspheming. Who can forgive sin but God alone? That's their reasoning. And they're right about that. Only God can forgive sin. Only God can forgive sin because He's the one being sinned against. All sin is against God. Remember when David confessed his sin of adultery and everything in Psalm 51.4, he said, against you, you only have I sinned. All sin is ultimately against God, because that's what makes sin sin, is the fact that it's against God. All sin is ultimately against God. And so, only the one sinned against can forgive, right? If somebody came in here and punched you in the nose, and then I walked up to that person and said, hey, don't worry about it, I totally forgive you. You would be like, wait a minute, he didn't punch you in the nose, he punched me in the nose, you can't forgive him, I have to forgive him. Only the one sinned against can forgive, because only the offended party... Remember what forgiveness is from last week? Remember, forgiveness is not just letting the person off the hook with the penalty. Forgiveness is a restoration of a broken relationship. And only the offended party can do that on his end, restore the broken relationship. So here's the thing to mark down. When Jesus forgave the paralytic sins, He was saying, All the sins this guy has ever committed his whole life were committed against me. That's what Jesus is saying when he says that he could forgive sins. That's why they call it blasphemy. And it is blasphemy if Jesus isn't God. So there's no question. Either Jesus is God or he's a blasphemer. Those are the only two options there are. Now someone might say, well the scribe's just misunderstood. All Jesus says is your sins are forgiven. That's like a divine, they call it a divine passive, meaning all Jesus is saying is, look, God the Father forgave your sins. I'm just letting you know, God has forgiven your sins. And He's not really claiming that authority Himself. Could that be what's going on here? Well, look at Jesus' response. What does Jesus say? When they accuse Him of blasphemy, does Jesus say, Oh, no, no, no, no. You misunderstand. I didn't mean to say, I have that authority. I'm not trying to say that. Is that what Jesus says? Look at verse 10. What does He say in verse 10? The Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins. There's no ambiguity there. He's claiming to have that authority and He specifies on earth. It used to be the only way to get your sins forgiven was to look to heaven, but now there's somebody walking around on earth that can do it. And it's the Son of Man, someone on earth who can forgive sins that were committed against God. And so when they accuse Jesus of doing something that only God can do, He doesn't back off at all. He doubles down. He's like, you better believe I can forgive sin. And not only that, look what He calls Himself, the Son of Man. That's His favorite title. Jesus printed up some business cards. That's the title He would have put on there, Son of Man. By far, it's His favorite title for Himself, way more than any other title. He calls Himself that 14 times in Mark. Much more than any other title, and it's what Jesus always calls Himself, but nobody else ever calls Jesus that. And the reason for that is it comes out of Daniel 7. And the Jews had overlooked Daniel 7 as a Messianic chapter. They just didn't think of that as talking about the Messiah. From what I can gather, they still don't. So it made the perfect title for Jesus to use because remember Jesus was shied away from a lot of the messianic titles because they were so connected, they were politicized. They're connected with rebellion against Rome and military stuff and all that, and He didn't want to connect Himself with that. So words like Messiah or Son of David or common words for messianic words, He kind of shied away from that. This is the perfect word because it avoids all that political and military baggage. It emphasizes His humility and it shows His deity. Because the Son of Man is, I think, the most exalted title Jesus could have possibly picked for the Messiah from the whole Old Testament. Daniel 7.13, let me just read it to you. It says, "...there before me was one like a Son of Man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He was given authority and glory and sovereign power. All peoples, nations, and men of every language worshipped Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and His kingdom is one that will never be destroyed." Now that is exalted language. Nobody in the Old Testament rides on the clouds except for God. No one has eternal glory and sovereign power except for God. No one is to be worshipped except for God. So the Son of Man is a divine figure. So in one sentence, when Jesus says the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins, He's making two claims to deity. I can forgive sins and I'm the Son of Man. So there's no question, when people try to say Jesus is just a good teacher, He never really claimed to be God. You ever get caught up with that kind of teaching? You ever wonder if Jesus actually claimed to be God? Just try this. Just try putting Jesus' words in anyone else's mouth. Just see how it sounds. What if I, you saw me, just somebody I never met walks into the study and I look at him, I say, you know, I've never met you, but I can see into your heart. I know you have genuine faith just by looking at you. And by the way, I'm the son of man and I'm gonna forgive all your sins if you ever committed right here and now. And I, cause I have the authority on earth to forgive sins and I will reign forever. I mean, hopefully like Jerry and Fred would be nearby to take me down if I started, I'm not in on that, but I don't think they'd have to take me down because it'll be so obvious to everybody that I'd lost my mind. You put the words of Jesus in anyone else's mouth and it's just lunacy. If Jesus is not God, don't follow Him, because anyone who makes these kinds of claims and isn't God is a lunatic. Now, Luke tells us that these Pharisees and scribes came from all over the country to be there that day. So remember, Jesus went into Capernaum, He preached, they say, wow, this guy has more authority than the scribes, and then He left, and now He comes back into town, and everybody, all these Jewish authorities are there from all over the country. Why do you think they were there? You think they're there to try to learn something? Like, oh, maybe we can learn something from this guy. No, I don't think so. These were the ultimate authorities in the country on interpreting Scripture. They're the scholars. Now, if this guy shows up, no training, no education from some nowhere place I've never heard of, People are saying he has authority greater than the scribes and the scribes get wind of that and So when Jesus gets back into town town scribes are there to show up to his first sermon and they're thinking we'll be the judges of this guy whether he's legit what his teaching is sound and There's no doubt in my mind. They're listening for stakes. They're there to find Some mistake in his teaching they're thinking the crowds, you know, the crowds are done. They can't pick up on things we can pick. We're trained in theology and we'll listen with a discerning ear and we'll pick up those subtle errors that he makes and his missteps in his theology and his teaching. So there these guys are, they're sitting there in the house scouring Jesus' words with a theological fine-toothed comb, trying to pinpoint some technical misstep, some wrong thing that most people would miss. They can expose Him as a novice or even a false teacher. So they're there, they're leaning forward in their seats, they're scouring their hearing. They're just like, okay, we've got to find this subtle, this little mistake that He might make. And it's like Jesus says, here, let me just make it easy for you. I'm God. I can forgive sins. I'm the Son of Man from Daniel 7. I'm going to reign forever and have authority over all. They're looking for some subtle error, and Jesus drops the most outrageous claim ever made right on their heads. Nobody has ever made this claim before. Not Abraham, not Moses, not David, not Elijah, no prophet, no king, no founder of any major world religion has ever claimed this. The ability to forgive sin, not Muhammad, not Buddha, not Confucius, none of them. The closest I think anybody has come to this is the Pope. But even the Pope He's not really making this claim. All he's claiming is to be able to pronounce whether or not God has forgiven someone. He's not claiming that all sins are committed against him personally. So this is unique. This is a unique claim. In fact, you can't even find a reference in the Old Testament to the Messiah being able to do this. I can't think of... The Old Testament describes some pretty amazing things the Messiah is going to do, including Daniel 7. Grandiose things. But I don't know of any Old Testament passage that speaks of the Messiah forgiving sins. This is new. When Jesus went into Capernaum and the people said, wow, He speaks with authority I've never heard of before, this is the kind of thing they're talking about. The scribes think they're having these thoughts in the privacy of their own heads. Jesus immediately calls them out. He does it by putting them on the spot with a question that I'm sure none of these guys have ever considered before or thought of before. Jesus is a master at teaching by just asking a question. He can just ask a question and teach so much. And that's what He does here. I love Jesus' questions. Verse 9, He says to them, To say to the paralytic, your sins are forgiven, or to say, get up and take your mat and walk? That's an interesting question, isn't it? Which is easier? Is it easier to forgive sins or to heal? One answer might be that it's easier to heal. It's actually much easier to heal than to forgive, because forgiving means you absorb the loss. The moment Jesus forgives this guy's sins, He seals his fate on the cross, doesn't He? He makes it so that on that day before his death, when he cries out to the Father and says, if there's any other way, is there any other way? Let this cup pass from me. And the answer has to be no. No, Jesus, there is no other way, because remember when you forgave that paralytic's sins? The moment Jesus forgave that guy's sins, and my sins, and the sins of everyone who's ever been forgiven, that made the cross an absolute necessity. So you could say it's easier to heal than to forgive. To forgive is really hard. However, that's not the question. That's not really what Jesus asks. He doesn't say which is easier to do. He says, which is easier to say? And the answer to that question, I think, is simple. It's easier to say your sins are forgiven, because that can't be disproved. Right? I could walk around all day long and say, you're forgiven, you're forgiven, you're forgiven, and I have the power, and how could you know? You can't see it. But if I walk around and say to a bunch of paraplegics, quadriplegics, get up and walk, get up and walk, get up and walk, it'd take you about two seconds to know that I'm a fraud, right? Because nobody's walking. It's a lot easier to say, oh, sins are forgiven. Jesus had forgiven this guy's sins, but that was invisible. Nobody can see that. How do we know? No one could see what Jesus could see. In fact, not even the man himself, not even the paralytic can see spiritually what's going on. Who knows what he could feel, but he can't see it. No one could see the countless thousands of sins on this man's record in heaven. No one could see the massive mountain of guilt that was on this guy's soul just instantaneously evaporate the moment Jesus said, your sins are forgiven. No one could see that happen except for Jesus. No one could see God the Father go from being furiously angry with this man to being fully reconciled with him and loving him as a son the instant Jesus said, I forgive your sins. No one but Jesus and the Father could see that. It's invisible. And so Jesus said, look, I realize that. I realize what I just did here is invisible. I don't expect you to just take my word for it. I'm going to prove it." And so he said, I'm going to prove it by doing something else that only God can do. Only God can forgive sins, so just to prove that I can do that, I'm going to do something else. And he heals the guy. And then look at their response, verse 12. Look down at verse 12. The people end up saying, we have never seen anything like this. That's significant, because other people have done healings, other people have had healing ministries, but never anything like what Jesus did. Jesus' miracles were absolutely unique. So last week I asked a question, I realize after you all left last week I asked a question I never got around to answering. Sorry about that. I asked, what is the relationship between all the physical healings and spiritual healing? I thought I was going to get to it and I didn't, but the answer is this. It's right here. The physical healings, all the miracles, are proof of the spiritual. Jesus came to be a doctor, right? But not a physical doctor, a doctor for souls. We're going to see that in the next pericope here, the next account. But the proof that He's doing all this soul work is that He can heal people at will. So that's the relationship. It's proof. And I've got a lot of material in the footnotes on that, just so you can study that a little further. So in this first run-in with the scribes, Jesus gives them a mild rebuke, but then He actually accommodates their unbelief. He gives them some more proof. He says, look, I've already provided plenty of proof. He's already done lots of miracles. But He says, I'll provide more. I'll give you even more proof. And this is the way God is. God never, ever expects anyone to believe on blind faith. Never. He always provides evidence, adequate, abundant, compelling proof. And that's what Jesus is going to do here. So He says, I realize it's easy for me to make these claims. You can't see it. But just so that you can know for sure that I do indeed have the authority on earth to forgive sins. And then at this point it just drives the commentators crazy because Jesus doesn't finish the sentence. It just drives them nuts. But he does finish the sentence, just not with words. He finishes the sentence with action. Look at verse 10. But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins, dot, dot, dot. And then he says to the paralytic, I tell you, get up, take your mat, and go home. And if you had been there in the room, and you happened to be looking at the guy's legs at that moment, You would have seen them go from just being these little tiny sticks to just having muscle like a regular leg. And God created muscles, Jesus Christ created muscles on this guy's bones with strength, and not just that, but muscle memory so he could walk and balance. He adjusted this guy's brain and gave him the ability to walk so he didn't have weeks of rehab. He can balance, and to show that He can balance, He carries His bed. He can walk just fine. And it happens instantly, and everybody sees it. The reason I'm making all that point is because I watched a miniseries one time, and it was on the life of Jesus, and it depicted this miracle. And in the movie, Jesus, the way He does this, the way they depict it, He comes up to this guy, covers his legs with a blanket, then starts manipulating this guy's legs through the blanket with his hands. The guy's screaming in pain the whole time. It takes a long time. Jesus is doing this stuff, the guy's yelling and screaming, and then finally Jesus says, okay, get up and walk, and the guy tries to get up, he can't get up, so other people help him up, and then they let go, and he wobbles and tips and stumbles and falls onto Jesus. And that's a miracle. And I'm watching the TV, I'm thinking, what is that? First of all, what's that blanket? Where's the blanket? There's no blanket? I mean, the Bible doesn't say anything about any blanket. What are they doing? The reason they do that is because that's what magicians do. Right? Magicians, they cover the thing up with a blanket or a sheet or something so that you can't see. Because what they're doing is a trick. If they don't cover it up, you'll see the trick. So they cover it up, they do their sleight of hand, they do the trick, then they pull it off and it looks like magic. And that's the way the people that make these movies think Jesus' miracles were. They're trying to make it look like a trick. And each one of those things in the movie that does that, each one of those errors, there's specifically things that Jesus specifically did in the text to show us that that wasn't the case. Like doing it in full view of everybody. And telling the guy, don't just get up, carry your bed, show that you can walk, show that you have balance. Nobody helps him. I mean, all of that stuff. And he does it in full view of them all, verse 12. There's no wobbling, there's no stumbling, he doesn't need any help up, there's no falling. He's stable, he walks all the way home. He does exactly what Jesus tells him to do. He says, verse 10, told the paralytic, I tell you, verse 11, I tell you, get up, take your mat, and go home. He got up, took his mat, and walked out. Just exactly unlike the leper in the last story who did the opposite of what Jesus told him to do, finally you get a guy who obeys. And it's interesting, it's at the moment he obeys that he's healed, right? It's a good lesson. You don't get the strength from God until you decide to act in obedience. So now this guy is in this house with this crowd. Now he has to elbow his way out through the same crowd that wouldn't let him in the first time. And now he has to get his bed out of the house. And he does, and he's carrying his mat, and he carries that mat all the way home. Gets home, his wife's all excited, kids can't believe it. And I don't know if he got home and thought, wait a second, why did I schlep this stretcher all the way home? I don't even need this thing anymore. I should have just dumped it off behind Jesus' house somewhere. But the point is, he obeys Jesus. He does exactly what Jesus tells him to do. and that proves Jesus' deity. Okay, so the first response was faith, resulting in forgiveness. The second response was hostility, resulting in two things. First, a mild rebuke, but then proof, more proof. Now a third response, one last response. This is the response of the crowd. Now it's interesting, crowds play a very significant role and prominent role in the Gospel of Mark. Mark mentions the word crowd 38 times in Mark. 38 times. And it's fascinating to watch how Jesus reacts and responds to the crowds. In most of those 38 times, the crowd is not portrayed in a positive light. Crowds are not really a good thing, most of the time. Crowds are presented as a... They're not any kind of measure of success, like we tend to think about crowds in church. You get a huge crowd, and you're like, wow! If I was doing this Bible study and people are standing room only, they're all over the house going, whoa, this is a successful Bible study. We tend to think that way. That's not the way it's portrayed in Mark. Crowds are never portrayed as a mark of success. Because you can draw crowds different ways. Anybody can draw a crowd. I mean, you can videotape a panda bear sneezing and put it up and eight million people will download it, right? The huge crowds in the Gospels don't represent ministry success. In fact, most of the time, it's just like here. They just get in the way of ministry. They're just in the way. We need to be careful in ministry about trying to draw huge crowds into the church by any means possible, because unreceptive people hinder ministry. They take up spaces that should be occupied by receptive people that can't get in now because all the unreceptive people are taking up the seats. And you've heard me talk about the seeker movement a lot, but the seeker movement was all about drawing the unchurched. And in many cases what it accomplished was just churching the undrawn. Taking people that are not drawn by the Holy Spirit and not really interested in the gospel and getting them to come to church for other reasons, attracting them with other things. But the problem with that is whatever you win them with is what you win them to. And so we need to win them with the gospel, not with whatever else. All right, so verse 12, this amazed everyone and they glorified God saying, we have never seen anything like this. That's the response of the crowd. So group number three, what's their reaction to Jesus? Amazement. Amazed everyone, they glorified God. And at first that sounds great, right? They glorified God, what could be better than that? I don't think Mark is using the term glorified here in the fullest theological sense. Sometimes to glorify God in the Bible just simply means to give God credit for something that just happened, to attribute something to God, acknowledge God as the source of it. And I think that's what's going on here. The crowd is just admitting what we just saw has to have come from God. There's no other possibility. It has to have come from God. Later on that's going to indict them. But it's not as good a thing as it sounds at first because it's coupled with this first part of the sentence, which is, they were amazed. And in Mark, that's not a good thing. It doesn't mean that they're just marveling at Jesus' power. It means they didn't know what to make of Jesus' power. They didn't know what to make of it. And that's a bad thing because Jesus told them what to make of it, right? The reason it's a bad thing is Jesus said, He told them exactly what it meant, and they didn't accept that. They're thinking, wait a minute, this has to be from God, and yet Jesus is doing it. It's baffling. I don't understand. Well, it's not baffling at all if you accept that Jesus is God, right? If you accept Jesus is who He said He was, it's not baffling. The reason it's baffling is they can't accept who Jesus is, so they're content to just go away baffled. And they do that through the whole gospel. They just keep being baffled and they keep going away baffled and they never do figure it out. Which means their amazement is really evidence of a hard heart. And just to show you that, look at chapter 6, just a little bit later. Mark 6. Jesus walks on water and look at verse 51. After Jesus walked on the water, it says, and then He stilled the storms, "...they were completely amazed, for..." Now this is going to explain them being completely amazed. "...they were completely amazed, for they had not understood about the loaves, their hearts were hardened." Why were they amazed? Because their hearts were hard. They were too hard to accept what Jesus was teaching when He did the loaves and fishes and fed the multitude. Jesus said who He was, so to continue to be perplexed after that showed hardness of heart, because they're not accepting what Jesus said. Alexander McLaren said this, he said, And that, with a little varnish of acknowledgment of God's power, which led to nothing, was all the fruit of Christ's mighty work. So Isaiah's words really do apply to them. They honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. That's what's going on. So that's the response of the third group. And what does Jesus do? What's the result of that? Mark doesn't say. He's gonna hold us in suspense there. He's gonna let that unfold. What to make of these amazed crowds that just keep being amazed and amazed and amazed? He's not telling us what to make of that just yet. We're gonna see later on, but it's not good. In fact, I'll just let the cat out of the bag. Capernaum, where this happened, no city heard more of Jesus teaching and preaching and witnessed more miracles of Jesus than Capernaum. And yet, in Matthew 11, Jesus ends up cursing them for rejecting Him. They're one of the ones that are cursed the most. So, here's the question, where are you in this story? We need to ask that for each one of the events that happen. Where are you in the story? The natural response is to just, for all of us, is to say, well, obviously. Obviously. I'm in the first category. Faith. The response of faith. I'm one of the four friends. I mean, look at me. I'm here on a Saturday. My only day off. I mean, I drive all the way to Dekono and I'm sitting on a hard folding chair listening to another one of Daryl's interminable messages. I mean, what else could it be? This is how much I love the preaching of the Word of God. I'm gobbling it up. Clearly, if I would have been there that day, I would have been one of those four friends. But remember, clamoring to hear the words of Jesus, all that does is get you into the crowd. You're not one of the four until you start digging through roofs. Not my roof, someone else's roof. You're not one of the four until you're digging your way to get to Jesus. So let me just leave you with this. Seeing Jesus' actions and hearing Jesus' words, being confronted with Christ, is like a litmus paper that reveals who you are, reveals the truth about your heart, what's in you by the way your heart reacts. So Jesus often called himself water, or a couple times he called himself water. Think of Jesus as being water, and things react differently to water. So there's three different kinds of hearts in this passage. One is potassium. You know what happens if you put potassium in a pan of water? Kaboom, big explosion, yeah. You put a little piece of potassium in a pan of water and you get a big explosion. Some people have that response. That's the scribes, right? They have an angry, explosive reaction against Jesus. Other people are like stones, like a piece of granite. Put them in water, nothing happens to them. I mean, the outside of the rock gets a little wet, take it back out, dries off, but nothing in the rock changes. That's the crowds. They get in the water, they get out, they get in the water, they get out, nothing changes. The third group is like sponges. That's the third category. Water permeates them, and that's faith. A heart that, when it's exposed to the truth about Jesus Christ, will not stop until it's had an encounter with Christ so profound that it absorbs into itself the very life of Christ. That's faith. Let's pray. Father, give us this faith like these men. Thank you for this example that's so inspiring. Help us to be inspired by it, Lord. And everyone in this room is facing some obstacles keeping us from nearness to you. Some crowd that's in our way and we can't get to you. and we give up because we don't have enough faith, we don't have enough trust in your goodness to do what it takes to find a way to overcome the obstacles so that we can get near you. Lord, give us faith. We pray this in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, amen. Okay, questions? Maybe you've already answered this, but he prefers calling himself a son of man But why not the Son of God? Okay, so Jesus calls Himself Son of Man, why not Son of God? Because that would really highlight His deity. I think it's interesting because that's one of the main points of Mark is that this is the Son of God, but he doesn't say it very often. He says it right at the beginning of his book when he introduces Jesus. Then God the Father calls Him Son at the baptism. And then you jump all the way to the end of the book, and that's the conclusion of the guard at the crucifixion. Wow, that was the Son of God. So it's real dramatic how he's seen, oh, and then the transfiguration, too. Real dramatic moments, but not a lot of them. And I think we did handle that in some detail back then at the beginning of the book. I think the conclusion we came to is mostly Son of God would have carried some of those messianic baggage, some of the messianic baggage that would have been misinterpreted by the people. If He just says, Son of God, at that moment before living out His life, teaching, and then having the cross as the suffering and the death and all that attached to it, there would have been so much misunderstanding that it would have done more harm than good. And so Jesus avoided terms that they thought they already understood and grabs a term that they just didn't, they hadn't, it was just new to them. And he lets, that gives Jesus the chance to define it himself. So son of God, I think they would have already had a pre-definition in their mind. It could be. It could be that he wanted to pull their attention to, hey, why don't you try reading Daniel 7? Just read it. Because if they read Daniel 7, they'll say, well, who's God in there? Because you've got the Ancient of Days, the Son of Man approaches the Ancient of Days, and they're like, wait a second. So yeah, it could be that he's doing that. And there's also the fact that he's emphasizing his humanity. Does spiritual faith have to precede physical? Do you have to have spiritual healing first in order to get to the physical healing? I would say, just going from the records about Jesus, very often people are healed on the basis of faith, but also very often they're just healed, and they don't even show evidence of any faith. They just come to Jesus and He heals them. In fact, some of them, like those 10 lepers, one came back and acknowledged Christ. The other nine didn't, and they were still healed. So Jesus can heal anyone, anytime, for any reason. What we need to be careful with here is, man, I read commentary after commentary that said that very thing. They said, what's the connection? Why the physical healing and the spiritual healing in the same story? It must be that Jesus is teaching us that In order to get physically healed, you have to deal with the sin first, because sin causes the problem. The reason somebody has a disability, a disease, a problem, a physical problem, is because of sin. And so you deal with the sin first, and then you can get the healing. And first of all, I don't see that connection. The connection I see is the physical healing is proof of the spiritual. That's the connection. I don't see anything in there that says the physical was caused by some sin. But here's the thing that really troubles me. By saying, oh, Jesus just forgave this guy's sins so that he could heal him, makes it so the healing, the physical healing is the ultimate goal. The spiritual healing is just a step to getting there. which is the opposite of everything we learned last week, right? I think what Jesus is doing when He just forgives the guy and doesn't heal him is to teach us that's the goal. See, that's the greatest thing. If all you get is spiritual healing and not physical healing, you're still at a great day. That's fantastic. And the only reason He heals them physically is just to prove this. And so it troubles me when people reverse that and they make the physical healing the highest goal. If they were just being careful, I would think they'd be saying, are you really the Messiah? Yeah, okay, so great question. What's wrong with the scribes just showing a little caution and saying, okay, some yahoo from Galilee is claiming to be the Messiah, maybe we should have a little bit of scrutiny here, maybe we should check him out and don't just blindly follow? I think, first of all, that's the reason they get just a mild rebuke and then proof. He accommodates that. And that's what Jesus does. Legitimate doubt, Jesus will accommodate it. Thomas says, I'm not going to believe until I can put my hand on your side. And he doesn't get rebuked for that at all. He just gets accommodated. He's like, okay, here it is right here. And so if it's legitimate doubt, God will accommodate by giving proof. They do get a mild rebuke, though, because Jesus has been doing miracles for quite some time. That's why they're there. That's why those scribes and pharisees... News about Jesus had spread quickly over the whole region of Galilee in chapter 1 from Capernaum. So there wasn't any question about Jesus performing these healings and it being balanced. So they already had enough proof to where it should have been. That's why the four friends already believed. It wasn't Jesus coming out of nowhere. So Jesus is being very gracious with them, but you can watch him through these five stories, and by the fifth story, chapter 3, verse 6, right at the end of that story, it says the Pharisees went out and plotted with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus. So story number one, they're just thinking, wait, wait, is this? And then by story number five, we gotta kill him, or take an action to kill him. So that's the direction they go. The more proof he gets, the harder they get. Their system, or did they really believe that he was? Well, what verse is it that says it was out of envy? I think it's an ax. It was out of envy that the chief priests and the scribes handed Jesus over to Pilate. So that was one thing. They were jealous of his fame, his success, his power. Yeah, I think so. I think the crowds are not presented here as being in the same class as the religious leaders. So the Jewish religious authorities are really hostile against Jesus right from the beginning pretty much. The crowds There's not really much comment. They're amazed, they're amazed. We see that as a negative thing, but it's not full-blown rejection until the end. But at the end, it is the crowds who are saying, give us Barabbas, and all that. So the crowds do end up following the leaders. The leaders bear more responsibility, but the crowds are definitely not embracing Jesus as the Messiah. Okay, how does this miracle prove that Jesus has the ability to forgive? Because lots of people have healed before, like prophets and so on. The answer is, all the people who had divine ability to do healings attributed it to God. So God gave that miraculous ability to someone like Elijah, and Elijah said, this is from God, and God is validating Elijah's message. The only one of the prophets in the Bible that doesn't attribute it to the Father, that attributes it to Himself, is Jesus. So when you can do the miracles, then your message is validated as being from God. And Jesus was the only one saying, I'm God, and I'm doing this on my own power. And so that's what sets it apart. Same thing with the resurrection. It's one thing to be Lazarus and someone else raises you from the dead. It's another thing to be Jesus and you raise yourself from the dead. So we don't have anybody. If Lazarus claimed to be God, then we'd have a difficulty. But all those cases where somebody has sound doctrine, they can do miracles, then they don't claim to be God except for Jesus. He's the only one that does all three. Okay, yeah. Wouldn't amazement be a good thing? Amazement in faith is a good thing. Mere amazement is a bad thing. So if you believe and are amazed, that's a fantastic thing. That's my goal. That's one of my biggest complaints about my own spiritual life is lack of proper amazement. I would love to just be rattled and shaken in awe and tremble, you know, like people I read in the Scriptures, instead of being so flat and dull in my emotions. So, yeah, I mean, that's a huge goal I have, to believe and to be amazed. But to just be amazed is not good. To just be amazed and say, well, I don't know what to make of that. I'm amazed how bad the Denver Broncos are. Well, there is a rational explanation for that one, but what I would compare it to is people who you give them all the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, and they're like, whoa, wow, that's amazing. Well, do you want to be a Christian? No. No, I'm going to still go my own way. And they just keep going their own way, and they don't argue against it. They don't say, oh, the Bible is baloney. They say, no, no, it's the Word of God, and it's true, it's amazing, it's great. But they don't believe, you know? And that's what the crowds were doing. Yeah. That's the kind of amazement that is talked about. And that's why when the disciples had it, Jesus said, OK, your hearts are hard. Because you just saw me feed 5,000 with a few loaves and fishes. And now you don't know what to make of it when I walk on water? What's the matter with you guys? They believe what he said in kind of a long way. You know what I'm saying? So they see him as the Daniel 7 figure, and they think? That's when they feel threatened. They feel threatened by it. And that's as they start. No, I think that they would have known as Daniel 7, but I think when they heard Jesus make that claim, they did not accept Him as being the Daniel 7 figure because... They didn't think anything more. Right. Because they didn't want Jesus to point them out again. Right, right. Maybe they were like, I've got to stop thinking thoughts. But yeah, when He's before the Sanhedrin, Then in chapter 14, they say, Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One? I am, Jesus said, and you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One coming on the clouds of heaven. So clear reference to Daniel 7. And the high priest tore his clothes. And he said, Why do we need more witnesses? You've heard the blasphemy. What do you think? And they all condemned him as worthy of death. Yeah, okay, so how is it that all sin and that's the second time you've been punching the mouth in this tonight How it's a it's a it seems like a It seems like an odd statement in Psalm 51 when David says that because he's talking about a sin that, I mean if he said that about a lustful thought or something like that that would be one thing, but he committed adultery and murder. And he says, "...against you only have I sinned." What about Uriah whom you took his wife and then killed him? Obviously David had sinned against the whole nation, obviously he sinned against Uriah, he sinned against Bathsheba, he sinned against his own wife. When he says you only have I sinned I think he's getting to the most fundamental level Yes, I've sinned against other people, but that's only bad because it's sin against God If I punched dairy in the mouth, there's number three Why is that evil? It's evil because it's sin against God. Now, yes, it's sin against Jerry, and I do need to make that right, but the only reason that's sin is because it's against God, and that's the most fundamental sense in which it's sin. And so David was just wrapped up in that. He's like, I realize everything I've done is against you. So the last part of your question, is it more than just disobedience? So why do I feel more guilty towards the person I sinned against than I do towards God? I think seeing, I can't see what I do in my relationship with God, but I can see it in human relationships. And I think God gives us earthly consequences of sin as training wheels to teach us what's going on with God. So a guy looks at pornography on his computer, and then he confesses it and says, God, please forgive me, you know, whatever. And then he does it again, and he's not taking that seriously. And then one time his wife walks in and sees it, and now he's sleeping on the couch, his wife's furious, she's thinking of leaving him, and it's a whole big ordeal, and his life is turned upside down, and he's crying and he's weeping and everything because He can just feel the damage, and he sees how evil his sin is because he can see the damage in a person, and that's designed to teach us, yeah, it was this bad even before you got caught by your wife, just between you and God, this is how bad it was. But we can be told that all day long, but we can't feel it until we see it hurt another person. Yeah, that's all the world sees is the human aspect, so if they do a sin that doesn't seem to hurt anybody, then they're like, how could that be sin? Yeah, you watch in the church how they respond to the real scandalous, socially scandalous sins that the world considers scandalous compared to how they respond to more acceptable sins that the Bible says are super scandalous, like grumbling, and yet the world doesn't think anything of them. And you just look at how the world responds to that. I never once heard of a pastor that had to step down because he got caught grumbling. And yet God killed thousands of Israelites in the Old Testament for grumbling. So it's one of the scandalous ones. It's listed with homosexuality and other real scandalous sins in the list. But we kind of adopt the world's way of calculating evil. It's not as extreme. Yeah, and I think David, you're right. On the one hand, David was a little bit like us in that it didn't seem to bother him until Nathan comes and exposes it. But after that, when he's writing Psalm 51, I think you're right. I think he had had such closeness with God that when that's broken and his eyes are open to how broken that is, and he's distant from God, he can't stand it. And it's so consuming to him that he just, he forgets about all the people, he forgets about Uriah and everybody else. All he can see is this rift between him and God.