Faith, Forgiveness, and the Authority of Jesus

As we've been journeying through the gospel of Mark, we've been learning that Mark's gospel is a perspective that teaches us that Jesus is not just our savior, although that's vitally important. We just sang about it, and it's probably the most common title or role that we give Jesus, that he came to save us from our sins. But he's not just that; he came to be our King, and he is a king unlike any other king, and his kingdom is unlike any other Kingdom. It's a brand new way of living, it's a brand new way of thinking, it's a brand new way of viewing the world that took the World by surprise. [00:00:56]

Jesus had been healing and delivering people, but this is the first encounter in the gospel of Mark that Jesus has with the religious leaders. These are the people that Jesus had the most conflict with. These are the people who didn't like what Jesus was saying. They felt most threatened by his pronouncement of himself as a new king with a new kingdom and a new way of relating to God. They didn't want to sacrifice their spiritual and religious power and what semblance of authority that they had over people to Jesus. [00:07:20]

The man's friends had faith that Jesus could do something on the man's behalf. They brought him to Jesus, maybe because they were at the end of their rope. They didn't know what to do, but they heard the stories. They heard that Jesus had healed a man with leprosy. They heard that Jesus had healed many kinds of illnesses and sicknesses and diseases, and they were willing to take a risk, to take a chance, in order to figure out if this is if Jesus was someone who could actually make a difference for their friend. [00:09:20]

Faith is spelled with four letters: R-I-S-K. These friends were willing to risk it. They're willing to risk something on Jesus for the sake of their friend, and they can't get through the crowd, so they go on the roof and start digging a hole to lower their friend down. They were willing to do whatever it took to carry their friend to Jesus. They had this level of expectation: "We can't do anything for them. We're at the end of our treatment plan with the doctors." [00:09:29]

Who are we willing to carry for Jesus? Who are we willing to be inconvenienced for in order for them to come to the one who can heal and deliver and, as we'll find out here soon, can save and set free? Who are the people in your life that God is burdening you for, laying on your heart, in order to help them encounter Jesus? A couple of weekends ago, we had a leadership team retreat as a church, and we got away downtown. We were meeting, praying, and talking about this reality in our lives. [00:10:37]

Jesus wasn't upset about the inconvenience or the property damage or the interruption. He welcomed it. He welcomed this type of brave faith that these four men exhibited for their friend. Who will you carry to Jesus? For us, it may begin just with that simple act of prayer. Who are you willing to carry to Jesus in prayer? Who are you willing to spend some time in your life to ask for God to intervene, to heal, to set free, to give hope, to give a future, to give friendship and encouragement? [00:13:25]

Are we willing to stop and listen and hear their needs and hear their story and hear what's going on to know how we could possibly care for them and be the hands and feet of Jesus in their lives? Do we have this kind of expectation that Jesus wants to use us to make a difference in their life? What about inviting? Grab an invitation off The Invitation Station in the lobby and share with the people that God has put in your life—the co-workers, your friends, your family, your neighbors. [00:14:21]

Seeing their faith, Jesus said to the paralyzed man, "My child, your sins are forgiven." This is not the expected response from Jesus, right? They were expecting you lower the paralyzed man. Jesus says, "What? You're healed. Walk, get up, jump around, dance for joy, do the thing that you haven't been able to do before, do the thing that he's done in the lives of other people up until this point." But this story is included because it's a building on what Mark is trying to communicate about Jesus as a new king. [00:16:38]

Yes, he has authority in the spiritual realm over evil spirits, and he can set you free and deliver you from the things that have been hounding you and tormenting you and pulling you down. Yes, he has authority over the Physical Realm, and he can heal your body, he can heal your whole self. But there's a deeper and greater thing that Jesus is setting up for us to understand here, and that's that Jesus even has the authority to forgive sins. Jesus has the authority to forgive sins. [00:17:20]

While we walked through the process of forgiveness, the theology that those people had as they were gathered in this house would have been this: I've sinned against God. When I sin, I've sinned against God primarily, and God is a righteous judge who should do whatever he wants to me in my life. That when I act out in injustice, selfishness, hatred, cruelty, lying, gossip, whatever the case may be, I act out in injustice and sin against other people, I'm sinning against God. [00:25:41]

Jesus invites us not just to come to him to be set free and for our bodies to be healed, but for the deeper realities in our life that Jesus can forgive our sins. He can restore our relationship with God, and he can heal us from the effects of our selfishness. He needed to heal him to demonstrate that he was forgiven, to demonstrate that Jesus spoke for God. And not only this, not only did he forgive the man's sin and heal him of his being paralyzed, but I love this in verse 5 when he says to the guy, "My child." [00:35:31]

Many of us have experienced this reality, not just that Jesus does good things for us and blesses us, but that he forgives us and he does the work of cleansing us from the effects of our sin—the guilt and shame that we carried because of what we've done, the broken relationships. All of these things Jesus can begin to restore in us when we allow him to have this kind of say in our lives. And not only have we experienced, but we have people in our lives that need to experience that exact same thing. [00:36:46]