Unforgettable Encounters with Jesus - Friends with Faith

Let's pray as we open God's word together. Our God, we come now to your word. And we pray that as we open it together that you would speak to us. Give us soft hearts, give us ears that are open, give us clear minds that we might hear from you, that you might reveal more of who you are to us. We pray.

Amen. A number of years ago, quite a few years ago now actually, Krispy Kreme announced that they were opening their first store in Canberra. Now, I suspect many of you weren't in Canberra at that time, but at the time it was like the thing everyone was talking about, Krispy Kreme is coming to Canberra. And there was so much excitement about it. I'd never eaten a Krispy Kreme at the time when it first was being talked about, really know what it was.

But I got swept up in the excitement and so my sister and I decided that we'd go and check it out. And so on opening day we decided to go to Krispy Kreme. And we had the same idea that everybody else in Canberra had because when we arrived we were met with a huge crowd. There was this ginormous crush of people that were between us and the store. Like now we can look back and we say, gee, aren't people crazy, like getting that excited about a donut?

But it's Krispy Kreme, right? So we turned up and there was this massive crowd and the poor 15 year olds behind the counter who had just like just been hired and hardly been trained were struggling to manage this line of people. And so it was moving so slowly. And so we joined the back of this queue and over the next probably 20 minutes, it hardly moved. And then out of the store came one of those poor 15 year olds looking quite worried with a tray and they'd cut up the Krispy Kremes into little pieces and they were giving them out as free taste testers just to stop people rioting.

So we took our little taste and we said, we've now had some Krispy Kreme. We left. We never got anywhere near the front of that line or to the counter. But maybe you've had a similar experience. Maybe you've had a time in your life where you've turned up somewhere and there is a big crowd of people between you and your destination.

Maybe it's been at airports, we've probably all experienced that. Perhaps it's been at a sporting event between you and the turnstiles. Maybe it's been at a hospital as you've been waiting for treatment wherever it was. I'm sure you can think back to the frustration you felt as you came and saw this huge crowd of people between you and where you wanted to be. And this morning, as we come to Luke's Gospel, we're going to be in Luke 5.

I'd encourage you to turn. There we find four men who are met with this same experience. They're met with a huge crowd that block the path to their destination. They come across a huge crowd that is between them and Jesus. And so we're going to read from verse 17 there in Luke's gospel, chapter 5.

The words will be up on the screen as we read. One day, while Jesus was teaching, some Pharisees and teachers of religious law were sitting nearby. It seemed that these men showed up from every village in all Galilee and Judea, as well as from Jerusalem. And the Lord's healing power was strongly with Jesus. Some men came carrying a paralyzed man on a sleeping mat.

They tried to take him inside to Jesus, but they couldn't reach him because of the crowd. So they went up on the roof, took off some tiles. Then they lowered the sick man on his mat into the crowd right in front of Jesus. Seeing their faith, Jesus said to the man, young man, your sins are forgiven. But the Pharisees and teachers of religious law said to themselves, who does he think he is?

That's blasphemy. Only God can forgive sins. Jesus knew what they were thinking, so he asked them, what? Why do you question this in your hearts? Is it easier to say your sins are forgiven?

Or stand up and walk? So I will prove to you that the Son of Man has the authority on earth to forgive sins. Then Jesus turned to the paralyzed man and said, stand up, pick up your mat and go home. And immediately, as everyone watched, the man jumped up, picked up his mat and went home praising God. Everyone was gripped with great wonder and awe.

And they praised God, exclaiming, We have seen a amazing things today. Now this passage begins, like a number of the encounters that we've been working through over the last few weeks, begins with Jesus and a huge crowd. But there's something slightly different about the crowd today because Luke specifically says that in this crowd are the Jewish religious leaders who have turned up. Now, they would have been there on other days as well. Absolutely they were.

We know Jesus interacts with them, but he says today that Pharisees and the teachers of the religious law seem to have come from every village in Galilee and Judea, as well as from Jerusalem. There is a Crowd of these religious leaders, it's possible that some of them still think Jesus can be attracted to their cause. I mean, ultimately, that was their hope. Their hope was that Jesus would reinforce their authority amongst the people, that he would tell them that they had it all right. And instead, Jesus had come and he'd said to them, you've got it wrong.

And so now the Jewish leaders are mostly turning up not to win Jesus to their cause, but to try and catch him out, to try and prove that he's a fraud or that somehow his healings are some kind of tricks. But ultimately they want to prove that he's not from God. And so probably in the heat of the day, Jesus goes into a home to teach. You can imagine as Jesus enters the home, the crowd following him through as they push into every nook and cranny of that home. The religious leaders would have used their authority and their power amongst the people to take the best spots.

They would have pushed the rest outside and they would have crowded in around Jesus. But you can picture people leaning in around the doorways, people looking through the window openings, people trying to just get a glimpse of Jesus or to hear what he has to say. And this is what faces the four men as they arrive at this house carrying a crippled friend on a mat. I wonder how they felt as they saw that crowd, Wonder how they felt as they tried to push through to the front or tried to find a gap where they could squeeze in. But it's impossible because the crowd is too great.

There's four of them. There's their friend on a mat. They need people to move so they can get to Jesus. But we know that culturally at the time, the thinking was that their friend who was paralyzed, was paralyzed because of his own sin, that he had sinned and this was God's judgment upon him. We looked at that last week, but he was considered unclean.

And so there's no way the religious leaders were going to be moving for this man. I wonder how you would have responded in that moment if you were one of the friends. I suspect if I was one of them. I was reflecting on it this week and I was thinking, if I was one of them, I probably wouldn't want to cause a scene. I certainly wouldn't do anything outrageous.

I might have said to my friend, sorry, mate, like, we tried. We gave it a good go. Or perhaps I might have said, look, we'll come back. We'll come back at another time when it isn't so busy. Or a bit like me at the donut store, once the hype's died down, a bit like, then we'll get you to Jesus.

But that isn't their response. And I think we can lose sight because we know the story. We can lose sight of how remarkable their response is. They clearly loved their friend and they had such a strong conviction that they had to get him to Jesus that they simply couldn't turn away when they're met with obstacles that seemingly are going to prevent them from getting there. Instead of saying, we've done all that we can do to, they look to the only space that's near Jesus that isn't jam packed with people.

They look to the roof and those four men say, we're going to get you up there. And somehow they do it. Luke doesn't give us a step by step account of what happens, he just gives us the broad picture. But I can't imagine it was easy as they pushed against the crowd, as they headed towards the stairs that led to the roof, as they strained and lifted, as they carried their friend up there, and as they start to open a hole in the roof, that would have been messy work. As they start pulling back layers of clay and straw on the roof, and as they do, I think we often forget that inside the room there would have been dust and debris falling.

I'm not sure that the religious leaders sat there and thought, oh, this is interesting. Let's just see how this plays out. I don't think the owner of the home is thinking, oh, I'm glad. I was thinking I'd put a skylight there.

I reckon people were shouting like, what are you doing? Get down from there. But through the whole process, these guys don't care. They don't care about the ramifications. They don't care that the homeowner might demand that they repair the roof.

They don't care that people in the crowd are going to be upset with them for disturbing Jesus, for breaking the social rules. They don't care about any kind of social embarrassment that might result. They are going to get their friend to Christ no matter what. And Luke tells us that they open a hole above Jesus and then probably with ropes and lots of effort, they lower their paralyzed friend down through the hole on his mat and they lay him there on the ground in front of Jesus.

I want you to imagine the different people in the scene at this moment. We've got the religious leaders standing there stunned. We've got Jesus taking it all in. We've got the paralyzed man there on the floor. We have four Men perched with their heads sticking over this hole, looking down with expectant wonder.

I suspect there was a moment of stunned silence as everyone took this in. And then Jesus breaks the silence with a simple statement there in verse 20 says, seeing their faith, Jesus said to the man, young man, your sins are forgiven. Jesus looks around the scene. He looks up and he sees the friends of the paralysed man, I suspect peering through the roof, probably covered in sweat and dirt. And he sees in them incredible faith.

Not just lip service to faith, but faith in action. If we think back to some of the encounters we've seen over the course of this series, we often see Jesus responding to the faith of the person who's been healed. We had it there with blind Bartimaeus by the roadside as he shouts, jesus, son of David, have mercy on me. We see it in the woman with the issue of blood as she reaches out and touches Jesus garment. Both of them show incredible faith on their own.

But here, notice, it's not the faith of the paralyzed man that catches Jesus attention, it's the faith of his friends. It's as if Jesus is saying to them, I see what you guys have done. You've climbed and you've carried. You've broken the social rules. You've literally broken the roof.

You've risked everything for your friend because you believed that I could change his life. And so Jesus responds to their faith and he turns to the paralyzed man and he says, young man, your sins are forgiven. You know, we've highlighted a lot through this series. It's been a theme how compassionate Jesus is. We see it over and over again in the Gospels.

We see a compassionate savior. And I'm gonna highlight it here again just momentarily because it's here in the text again in the New Living, we have Jesus address the paralyzed man as young man. Some translations have friend or son in the Greek, the word that's used here, it's a warm, personal greeting. It shows a tender heart towards the man. It's a man who was so used to being overlooked, so used to the religious leaders despising him.

I wonder if he expected the same from Jesus. But instead, Jesus speaks to him like you and I would speak to a close friend, and he says, young man. But what he says next is even more remarkable. He says, young man, your sins are forgiven. I remember a couple of years ago, two of our kids got into an argument.

I'm sure that never happens in your house. It's just our house. But they got into a disagreement, and that disagreement led to some Pushing and some angry words. And we'd intervened, and I got them together. We'd calmed them down.

And I said to the two of them, hey, we need to resolve this. We need to say sorry. And so I asked one of them to go first. I said, you know, you need to say sorry. And so they said what I thought was a very genuine sorry.

They said, I'm sorry. And the other one said, well, I don't forgive you. Kids have a special way of just digging the knife in, don't they? I said, well, I don't forgive you. And you can imagine what happened next.

The other one crying, more angry words. Now there was the accusation, they won't forgive me, even though I said sorry. And, you know, in that moment, I couldn't step in and forgive on their behalf. I couldn't forgive on their behalf. It wouldn't have meant anything because I wasn't the one who had been wronged.

The only person, the only child who could offer forgiveness was the one who'd been hurt. And that's what makes this moment with Jesus so remarkable, because when he says to the man, your sins are forgiven, he's saying, I am the one who was wronged by your sins, and I forgive you. And that makes the religious leaders so angry. We see it there in verse 21. When the Pharisees and the teachers of religious law hear this, they say to themselves, who does he think he is?

That's blasphemy. Only God can forgive sins. Luke tells us that Jesus knows exactly what they're thinking. And it's more than just being able to pick up the vibe in the room. This is something deeper.

Jesus knew what they were thinking in their hearts. He wasn't just reading the room. He was aware of the internal conversation inside them before they said anything out loud. The religious leaders believed, correctly, that to forgive sins was something that only God could do. So when Jesus says, your sins are forgiven, they immediately say, hang on, only God can say that.

Who do you think you are? And as he so often does, Jesus doesn't get into a lengthy theological debate with them. He simply poses a question there in verse 22. He says, why do you question this in your hearts? Is it easier to say, your sins are forgiven or stand up and walk?

You see, Jesus had been really intentional about his words here. And his point here is actually pretty simple. Anyone could say, your sins are forgiven. Any religious leader, any fake messiah at the time could walk around and say to people, your sins are forgiven, and get away with it. Because there was no Way to test it.

There was no way to prove them wrong. So you could say it all you liked. But if you say to someone who's paralyzed, get up and walk, and they don't, immediately you're exposed as a fraud. Everyone there would know that you don't have the authority to do the things that you say. And so Jesus says, if I was a fraud, I'd stick with the invisible claim, the spiritual claim only.

But I'm actually going to show you the physical proof so that you see that I have the power to do the spiritual and the physical. He says it there in verse 24. He says, so I'll prove to you that the Son of man has the authority on earth to forgive sins. He turns to paralyzed man. He says, stand up, pick up your mat and go home.

There's a key here that I don't want us to miss. You see, Jesus could have simply said to the man, get up and walk. He could have skipped the forgiving of sins. But he's making a point there in front of those religious leaders. His point is that his purpose, his mission, the reason why he came, was more than just to display that he had power over physical suffering.

His mission, his ultimate purpose, was to deal with spiritual suffering. He came to restore people's hearts to God. Just the chapter before, Jesus had stood in the synagogue in front of some of these same leaders, and he declared the words of the prophet Isaiah had been fulfilled in him. It's there in Luke 4:18, where Jesus stands up and he reads from the prophet Isaiah, the spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released, that the blind will see, that the oppressed will be set free, and that the time of the Lord's favor had come.

And so, with those words ringing in the ears of the religious leaders, they stand, they watch as the man who was once paralyzed stands up. And Jesus gives them undeniable proof that he has power that only comes from God.

As we draw this to a close this morning, there's lots of things that we could take from this encounter. There's lots of things that we could be prompted, we could apply in our own lives. And maybe the Holy Spirit's already prompted something in your heart. We could reflect on the faith of the four men who have faith to persist even when they come across obstacles. And some of us need that kind of faith.

We could speak about the compassion of Jesus again. We could speak of Jesus Power to forgive sins. We could talk about the fact that when you encounter Jesus, it always prompts a response. Jesus makes these incredibly huge claims about who he is. And so you can't encounter Jesus.

You can't hear about him and just stay neutral and say he was a good guy because he says he is so much more. And so you either have to do like the religious leaders and reject him and despise him because he upsets your way of life, or respond to him in faith like so many of the other people do. But I actually want to reflect on something different today. Earlier this year, we as a church, we launched our 2030 mission goals. You can grab a booklet from the back if you haven't seen that, or if you've lost yours, or if you want another, I've got plenty.

I would want you to have one and I want you to read it. But our 2030 mission goals are what we're believing God for between now and 2030. And there's some big things in there, but one of them is going to come up on the screen. Hopefully we've got that there in the next slide.

By 2030, we're believing that each one of us will have at least one of our family or friends that come to know Jesus as their Savior.

That's a big goal. Maybe if we were writing it and we had a said, our mission goal is that one or two of us would have someone we know come to know Jesus. That might have felt more achievable, because surely in a church of about 150, there's one or two people ready that we're connected with to receive faith, to come to know Jesus. But instead we've said we're going to push for big faith. We're going to push for something that seems impossible.

Just as those men at the house, as they arrived, saw obstacles in their way. I'm sure when you read that, you feel that there are obstacles in your way. You feel like between you and your friend who you're taking to Jesus, there's some big mountains to climb, there's some big crowds to get through, and it might feel impossible. We've talked about this before as a church. There's been quite a bit of research done over the last couple of years that actually says people in our society, your friends, your family, people you were connected with, are more ready to encounter Christ, are more ready to come along and connect with church, are more ready to consider the big things of life than they have been for decades.

The research says that I think sometimes we need some convincing that that's actually the case. I think sometimes we try and we kind of get rebuffed and we think, oh, well, I tried, maybe I'll try again another time. But as I was studying this passage, I was struck by how determined those men were to get their friend to Jesus. How determined they were that he was going to encounter Christ. And the reason is because they knew that Jesus could change his life.

They knew that Jesus could heal him, could give him a purpose, could set him free.

And Jesus is still doing that same thing today.

I think sometimes we lose sight of that, that Jesus is still setting people free.

You know, when Jesus turns to the man and he says, I forgive your sins, whose faith is he responding to? He's responding to the faith of his four friends. It's the faith of his friends that Jesus responds to. It's their boldness in picking him up and carrying him to Jesus. When the man is there in front of Jesus, he encounters Christ and it changes his life.

But it was his friend's faith that got him there. And so that's my challenge to you today, is if you have that person or maybe you haven't prayed and thought about who your person could be, I want you to do that. I want you to commit some time this week to thinking who is my person? And then I want you to ask Jesus to give you that kind of faith. The kind of faith that climbs on a roof and digs a hole in it and lowers a friend to Jesus.

The kind of faith that absolutely believes that the only way that your friend would be healed and set free is by getting him in front of Jesus. And why don't we ask that Jesus respond to our faith on our friends behalf? Why don't we have big faith to believe that they will come to know Jesus? And we ask Jesus, Jesus, would you see my faith? Would you see my faith in believing that you can set them free and would you draw them to you?

Let's pray and ask that Jesus would help us do that.

Oh God, we thank you for your word. We thank you for these incredible moments from the gospel.

Lord, we think of those four men of the faith that they had that absolute conviction that they had to get their friend to Jesus. And we thank you that they did. Because as he encounters Christ, he is set free spiritually and he is healed physically.

Jesus, would you plant in our hearts a person, person in our world, in our life, in our circle, who doesn't know you, who needs to know you? Would you give us such a burden and a conviction for them that we would have bold faith that no matter how far they are away from you, no matter how many obstacles might be in the way that they would encounter you. And that you would set them free that spiritually, that physically, that emotionally, Lord. That you would heal them, Lord. And that they would step into new life, new purpose, new hope, the great plan and the great things that you have for them because of our bold faith.

Lord, give us that faith. We pray in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. Well, God bless you, Church.

Don't forget, we won't be here next Sunday. We're gonna be three minutes away at Duffy Shops. Make sure you're there. Come along. Would you pray this week for good weather?

The forecast is looking like rain. But we're believing that God will ensure that it is a beautiful day for us. We trust that he will. Stick around. There's lollies at the back.

Get there before the kids enjoy some fellowship. God bless Sam.