Restored and Forgiven

Bob Lapine: Welcome to Truth for Life, where today Alistair Begg shares dramatic stories of Jesus healing two men, a hopeless leper and a helpless paralytic. And while these afflictions are certainly devastating, there is a condition that supersedes all other ailments. What is it? To find out, let's turn in our Bibles to chapter 1 in the Gospel of Mark. We're beginning with verse 40.
Alistair Begg: The material and bodily benefits were not and are not the things that matter most. And that is something that we really need to take on board if we're going to study the Bible because the Bible challenges our preoccupation with time and introduces us to eternity. It challenges our preoccupation with materialism and the things that are tangible and seen and introduces us to an invisible world and actually goes as far as to say that the things that are seen are temporal and pass away and the things that are unseen are eternal. And as the crowd begins to rush to Jesus, their preoccupation, understandably and almost inevitably, is with that which is material and tangible and bodily. And in these two incidents this truth is going to come home forcibly. First of all then, we're going to look at this man with leprosy, who is wonderfully restored by Jesus. The man's condition is stated in the opening phrase, a man with leprosy. The reason it states it so frankly and boldly is because he was defined by his disease. And rather than me make an attempt to try and explain the disease of leprosy to you, let me give you just one quote from a commentary on the book of Leviticus by R.K. Harrison, an old Old Testament scholar. Listen carefully to this so that we might understand the phrase, a man with leprosy. A diagnosis of leprosy was as much of a death sentence to the ancient Israelites as news about an advanced malignancy would be to a modern patient. Is a cancer diagnosis. The diagnostic guidelines furnished for the priest physician would prevent him from bringing unnecessary sorrow and hardship to his countrymen, while at the same time ensuring the health of the community. Once a man was branded as a leper, he had to adopt the posture of a mourner by tearing his clothes, allowing his hair to become unkempt, covering his beard or mustache, and crying unclean. He had to live outside the camp or perhaps in company with other lepers. But his existence was nothing more than a living death. Unless there was a quick remission of the disease, the victim of clinical leprosy knew that his condition would be of lengthy duration and that his loathsome nature would prohibit significant contact with society. Most of all, the leper would be cut off from spiritual fellowship with the covenant people and in a real sense would be without hope and without God in the world. That is this man's condition. And the gravity of his condition is matched by the intensity of his approach. You will notice the way in which Mark puts it, very graphically, the man with leprosy came to him, begged him, kneeling down. The man, a leper, puts himself within touching distance of Jesus. You're not supposed to do that if you're a leper. You're supposed to stay as far away as possible. Therefore it must surely be an indication of how badly he wanted to get to Jesus. The reputation of Jesus having preceded him and the man you see from the text is absolutely convinced of Jesus' ability to restore him to both health and society. If you are willing, you can make me clean. That's his condition. Secondly, Jesus' compassion. Verse 41 begins with the phrase, filled with compassion. This is a very strong verb, it's used elsewhere in the Bible. Those of you who remember the story of the prodigal sons, of the love of the father, will perhaps remember that this very phrase is found in Luke 15 and verse 20, describing the response of the father to the sight of his long lost son. Remember it? And when he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him. He overflowed with compassion. When he looked at this man, Jesus looked at the man, a man who had to announce that he was unclean, a man who was shunned by society, a man who was distanced from the whole community of faith, Jesus looks at him and he is filled with compassion. And it is because he is so full of compassion that it overflows from him. And the only way that we will ever overflow with compassion is if we're full of compassion. The only way that you will ever overflow with joy is if you're full of joy. You actually spill, we all spill out in our lives that which we're filled with. If we're filled with ourselves, it just spills out. Jesus is filled with compassion. And he does what the rabbis said you mustn't do. The rabbis said that if you touch a leper, you become ceremonially unclean. So Jesus defies the ceremonial law and touches the leper. How long would it have been since this man had ever been touched by anyone other than another leper? He perhaps could never remember an occasion when somebody without the leprous community had actually touched him and Jesus touches him. Filled with compassion for him. He identifies himself with him. He gets down as it were into his circumstances. And when Paul finally summarizes the wonder of this, he says in 2 Corinthians 5:21 that God made him who knew no sin to become sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. And by his touch of this man, he pictures the way in which Jesus takes upon himself all that we deserve as punishment for our sin and in doing so gives to us everything that we do not deserve that is bound up in his righteousness. And there is no gap here. You will notice the man was instantaneously cured. Verse 42, immediately the leprosy left him and he was cured. Again, a wonderful picture of the instantaneous transformation of the gospel in a life. Now Jesus then gives a directive. The man's condition, Jesus' compassion, now Jesus' directive. The background to this, I'll leave you to read for yourself, go to chapter 14 of the third book of the Bible, the book of Leviticus, and you can fill in all the blanks. Essentially what Jesus tells him to do in going to the priest and offering the sacrifice of Moses is to do the right thing. It's quite an irony that Jesus having countermanded where the ceremonial law now tells this man to make sure that you keep the law. If you do this, says Jesus, it will be an expression of gratitude. You will be providing evidence to those to whom you go and also it will be by this means that this man will be able to re-enter the community. In other words, there's a pragmatic dimension to this. If this man were simply to go out into the community and try to re-engage with things as a result of what had happened to him in Jesus, then people would have said, well, we don't recognize this at all. You have to go through the normal channels. You have to go to the priest, you have to do what Moses said in the law. If you're going to receive restitution and if you're going to receive the necessary paperwork and so on so that you can join our exercise club, but you can't just join the exercise club because you said that you met Jesus someplace along the line. We don't know what you're talking about. So Jesus recognized that the essential nature of the man's restoration, not to health for he's taken care of the restoration to health, but the restoration to the community is directly tied to his obedience to the law of Moses. So the directive is clear and you will notice then that the man's disobedience is quite striking. Jesus has already silenced the demons. Verse 33 of chapter 1. Verse 34 actually, he also drove out many demons but he would not let the demons speak because they knew who he was. So he has silenced the demonic powers and now this man refuses to keep quiet. He refuses to keep quiet. It's amazing, isn't it really? I mean, I don't know how the man was supposed to do this quite honestly. I mean he was supposed to do it and be obedient. But he clearly couldn't handle it and he didn't do it. Now I don't want to cut him too much slack because you will notice as a result of his disobedience, Jesus could no longer enter a town openly and had to stay outside in lonely places. In other words, the man's disobedience hindered the development of the ministry of Jesus in the Galilean villages. That's what the text says. Because the man disobeyed Jesus it had an impact on what Jesus was doing. But he disobeyed by telling all about Jesus. What kind of disobedience is that? He disobeys by telling the good news. Aren't we always supposed to tell the good news? Aren't we always supposed to talk about everything? Isn't it terrific when we all talk, talk, talk, talk? No, let me, let me just pause here. I won't delay here, but let me just pause and say that I think there is perhaps an inherent warning in this, that it is possible for us by our witnessing to prove a detriment to the cause of the gospel. Have you ever thought about that? That by our very witnessing we may actually hinder the work of the gospel. That's hard for those of us who have big mouths, because we love to let it go. Give it a plenty of this. Oh yes, I learned this and I know this and let me tell you about that and you know this and you've done that wrong and everything else. And all of a sudden, before we know where we are, thinking we're advancing the cause of the gospel, we're actually driving people away. Or just a genuine nuisance. The command to go out and tell the world about Jesus is circumscribed by all of the other principles that are inherent in what it means to live for Christ and to be obedient to Christ. Sometimes our most eloquent statements will be found in silence. This man was supposed to be quiet. He wasn't quiet. And the impact is recorded for us there, isn't it? It changes the strategy of Jesus. He's no longer able to go into these towns. He stays outside. But there's no dip in popularity as the final sentence of chapter one makes clear. Yet the people still came to him from everywhere. Mark is very expansive, isn't he? So he's told us already that all the sick and the demon possessed came in the evening, that the whole town gathered at the door. And now the people were coming from absolutely everywhere. I think Mark wants us to know that this Jesus movement was really gaining momentum. Now, as a result of this, and after a few days, Jesus is back in Capernaum. Capernaum appears to have become now his home base. That's what verse one suggests. A few days later, when Jesus again entered Capernaum, people heard that he had come home. He had come home. And so verse two tells us that the crowd that gathered was so vast that there was no room left, not even outside the door. And notice what Jesus did. At the end of verse two, he preached the word to them. This became a technical phrase which by the time of Paul writing to Timothy in his second letter, says to him, Timothy, people are interested in this, they have itching ears, they want to hear that, they gather around them all kinds of people to say all kinds of things, but this is what I want you to do, Timothy. I want you to do what Jesus did. I want you to preach the word. And what was the word? The word that Jesus was preaching is in verse 15 of chapter 1, that the kingdom is near and that repentance and faith is called for those who hear the call of the kingdom. In other words, while the majority of people were absolutely fascinated by miracles, Jesus was focused on telling them the good news. We're not going to pause on this either, but it is a very contemporary circumstance. You can gather a crowd fascinated by miracles and claims of the miraculous. Much harder to gather a crowd. If you're going to tell them, we're going to look at Mark chapter 1, beginning at verse 40, and we're going to go through to verse 12 of chapter 2. They say, oh dear, what a dreadful bore. Can't you do something spectacular? Can't you do something so that we could all talk about it? Well, Jesus of course could do all of these things, but he determined he wasn't going to appeal to their fascination with that which was material and bodily. He was going to stick with the process and the focus of proclaiming the good news of the gospel because that was and is what really matters. And this little story reveals that to us. I made a number of headings and I'll just tell you what they are as I'm flying towards the conclusion. I wrote through the roof in my notes at this point, through the roof. The ministry is going through the roof. Not up the way, but down the way with the arrival of this paralyzed man on a mat carried by four other men. They were clearly determined to get him to Jesus. There was no way that they were going to get down the street or through the front door of the house. And so one of them must have said, well, we don't have to put up with this. We'll just go through the roof. And up on the roof they go. Now, I can imagine what it was like down below as Jesus has the group in the house and he's giving his instruction and for somebody who's distressed by babies crying, I can't imagine if somebody took the roof off and clods of clay started falling on my head. I mean, I don't, that is a level of communication such as I've never encountered. So, you can only but imagine that Jesus stops for a moment and this thing falls down in bits and pieces and eventually there's a face poking down through the through the ceiling and looking up. And Jesus could have said, get them off the roof, I'm busy here, but apparently he said, well, the guy will either fall through or he'll drop, they'll drop him down or something, but we'll deal with it as it comes along. Imagine their faces, the faces of the people covered in dirt and sweat and just waiting for Jesus to show them what they came to see, just waiting for another of these great miracles. But neither they, the group, the four, nor the people gathered, nor we could ever be ready for what they heard. And then I wrote in my notes, a provocative statement, which is there for you in verse 5. Jesus says, Son, which is a term of endearment, son, your sins are forgiven. Now, can you imagine after all of that effort, getting the fellow down the street, up on the roof, digging a hole in the roof, dropping him down, and there he goes. Finally, he's down before Jesus, mission accomplished. And they're all waiting for him to get up out of his bed. And Jesus says, your sins are forgiven. They're looking at one another on the roof. Wait a minute. We brought him here for a visible change. We didn't bring him here for an invisible forgiveness. What is this? What kind of statement is this? Is this inappropriate? Is this statement irrelevant? The reason Jesus said what he said, and listen carefully because this is the nub of this. The reason that Jesus said what he said was because he was putting his finger on the man's and everybody's greatest need, the need for forgiveness. He was going to show the man that the real need in his life did not have to do with his paralysis of body, but with his paralysis of soul. And so he addresses first things first. He's not disinterested in the man's physical condition. The record bears it out. He healed the man. Nor is Jesus unconcerned about your health or about your marriage or about your job or about your unemployment or your security. He is not unconcerned about all of these things, but first things first. Jesus wants for you the things that matter most, or we might put it better still, Jesus wants for us the thing that matters most. And that is that we should be restored to a relationship with God who has made us for himself. I then wrote in my notes, immediate conflict. And the conflict now comes not from the devil himself, who had opposed Jesus in the wilderness, not from the demonic forces that had opposed him in the synagogue, but amazingly, from the religious establishment. We might expect that these experts on the law, these people who understand the Old Testament scriptures, would immediately be on the side of this man who spoke in terms of compassion and forgiveness. But as Mark is about to make clear in what follows in his gospel, the stiffest opposition to Jesus is going to come from the religious establishment. Now I don't want to get off on an anti-establishment diatribe, but I do want you to consider, because you're sensible people, just review church history and consider how often it is that the religious establishment seems to be absolutely bent on reinforcing all kinds of concepts and notions and minimizing the necessity of people coming to Jesus, acknowledging that they are without God and without hope in the world. Consider how easy it is for some other message to sound out from organized and sustained religion. Now these men are immediately in conflict with Jesus. It's not that their theology is wrong, as you will notice, they realize that only God can forgive sin. What is wrong is their deduction, their powers of deduction, their logic is off. Who can forgive sins except God alone? That's right. Well then this man must be guilty of blasphemy. No, not necessarily. Have you entertained, are you unwilling, are you unable to entertain the alternative explanation? That the one who has just said to this man, your sin is forgiven, is none other than God incarnate, God in the flesh. And so Jesus asks a question. I wrote that in my notes as well. Knowing what they were thinking, you will notice, verse 8, Jesus challenged them to consider. He says, let me ask you, which is easier, to say to the paralytic, your sins are forgiven, or to say, get up, take your mat and walk? Well, clearly it's easier to say the former, isn't it? It's easier to say your sins are forgiven because how can anybody verify that? How can you know whether it's happened or whether it hasn't happened? It's harder from this perspective to say the latter, to say take up your mat and walk, because if it doesn't happen, then the speaker is immediately exposed to ridicule. So Jesus says, having said what is easy, now let me say what is hard so that you will know that the Son of Man has authority on Earth to forgive sins. How could Jesus with such ease pronounce forgiveness? Because he recognized that this forgiveness was about to be achieved at great cost to himself, in that he would be the very sacrifice for sins necessary to see men and women reconciled to God who had made them. He, by his death on the cross, was going to make it possible for the Christian to say, praise my soul, the King of Heaven, to his feet your tribute bring. I'm ransomed, I'm healed, I'm restored, I'm forgiven. Who like me his praise should sing? Actually, it's not just difficult to say your sins are forgiven, it's impossible. For only God can forgive sins. Do you get it? And the crowds flocked to Jesus because they recognized that in his compassion he was able to touch them bodily and materially, as crowds flock to contemporary churches in America today. It is possible to preach in such a way as to suggest that that is actually why Jesus came. To fix your finances, to enable you with your teenage children, to put your marriage back together again and so on. It's just sort of a divine psychotherapy program. And people will stay with that for a very long time. What is not so clearly heard is what Jesus said. I want your sins to be forgiven. Don't think for a minute that the reason Jesus came was simply to put you on your feet. He may put you on your feet, but he may not. But what he came to do was to restore you to a relationship with God who made you. And it would be better to lie flat on your back for all of your life and go to heaven than dance your way through your life and go to hell. That's why Jesus said, Son, let's deal with first things first. The walking is not a problem. This is the issue.
Bob Lapine: You're listening to Truth for Life with Alistair Begg. Maybe today's message brought to mind family or friends or neighbors or coworkers who have not yet realized that their greatest need is forgiveness. And if that's the case, we have a short book written by Alistair that you can use to introduce others to Jesus. The book is titled The Man on the Middle Cross. This booklet tells the story of three people whose lives were changed when they met Jesus, including the paralyzed man we learned about today. It explains that each of these people had a desperate need, but they didn't realize their greatest need was to have their sins forgiven. The Man on the Middle Cross is available for purchase at our cost of just $1, so you can buy as many as you need and give them away widely. Purchase your supply online at truthforlife.org/middle or call us at 888-588-7884.
Bob Lapine: I'm Bob Lapine. What kind of people does Jesus call to follow him? The morally upright, the kind-hearted, those who are eager to serve? Tomorrow we'll consider the calling of an unlikely person.
Bob Lapine: The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life where the learning is for living.