The One Who Can Forgive Sins

Luke 5:12-26 - Riley Boggs

Introduction

For those of you who attended public school, you probably remember the book fair. I’m not even sure they do it anymore. For those of you who aren’t familiar, the book fair was exactly what it sounds like. The book fair was a traveling little book shop that would set up in your elementary school for a few days and sell books and pencils and other stuff. It only came once a year, so once you saw it there on a Monday, you would go home and beg your parents for some money to spend the next day.

And I remember that there was one book that all the kids would run and find every year when the book fair came to the school. It was too expensive to buy, so we would all crowd around it and try to look at as much of it as we could before we had to return to class. Do any of you all remember what book I’m talking about? It was Ripley’s Believe Or Not: Guiness World Book of Records. It was a book filled with unbelievable things that had happened, world records, and all sorts of weird stuff. It would have stories and pictures of things like the woman with the world’s longest fingernails. And every year it would get updated, so it never grew old.

Now, I want us to consider why all the kids flocked to go see this book of absurd, weird, and seemingly impossible things. Why was this so interesting to us? But it’s not just elementary age kids, it’s everyone. Young and old alike, we love, and are drawn to, when the impossible becomes possible. We love the once-in-a-lifetime moments, the “that will never happen again” moments. There is something about those things, those miraculous things, that capture our attention.

But here’s the thing. If these seemingly impossible things started happening often, we would become less and less amazed by them. If that Ripley’s believe or not book never updated, we wouldn’t have went back to it. Why? We had seen it before. If you hit a hole-in-one every time you played golf, not only would you become famous, but the amazement of doing something so unlikely would start to feel not as amazing. The whole reason that it amazes us is because we think it might never happen again, so it if it happens a bunch, we aren’t amazed anymore.

The reason that I bring all this up is because I think we can approach Biblical stories, like the one we are looking at this morning, without a sense of amazement because we have heard them so many times. If you grew up hearing these stories, when you hear that Jesus healed a man with leprosy, you might think, “Yep, that’s right. He did.” Or maybe when you hear this story of Jesus forgiving and healing a paralytic man, you think, “Oh yeah, He did do that didn’t He? Hmm.” In other words, because we are so familiar with these stories and have been around them so much, we aren’t as amazed by them as we should be.

This morning, what I’d like to do it try and help us be amazed by these stories again. What is taking place here in Luke 5:12-26 is amazing. What seems impossible becomes possible. And not only should these stories capture our attention, but we should be amazed at the one who is doing all of these things, Jesus. I think it’s important that we try and recapture this, that we try to stoke the fire within us a bit. So, what we’ll do is look at the first story and I’ll draw out a point, then we’ll look at the second story, and I’ll draw out 2 points from there. The first point is this.

1.) Jesus heals those who seem unhealable

The first story starts in verse 12 and we read that in one of these cities Jesus had went, there was a man who was full of leprosy. Leprosy was a severe skins disease that would have caused this man to be a total outcast from society. You don’t have to turn there, but we can know what this man’s life looked like, as someone with leprosy, according to the law found in Leviticus 13:45-46. This text tells us that if you have leprosy, you were to wear torn clothes, grow you hair long and let it hang loose, and then if anyone gets near you, you must cover your upper lip and cry out “Unclean, unclean”. But not only that, but you must live outside the camp of everyone else, alone. You were to be a total outcast. This was this man’s life.

And we read in the story that this man, when he saw Jesus, he fell on his face before him and begged him saying, “Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.” In response to this, Jesus reached out His hand and touched him saying, “I will; be clean.” And in that moment, he was made clean. Then Jesus tells him to go and show himself to the priest, who would’ve inspected this man, ensured that he was indeed cleansed, and then performed the necessary measures to welcome him back into the community.

Now there are so many things here that are amazing, that should capture us. First of all, this man had to have a tremendous amount of faith to do this. There is no situation where this would have been acceptable, and yet, this man had faith that Jesus could heal him, and he took the chance. And, he was right. Secondly, we should be amazed that Jesus touched this man. That may not seem like something that should wow us, but that’s because we don’t understand the significance of that touch. Typically, if someone were to touch a person with leprosy, that person would then be considered unclean. That is why there were all these measures for a person with leprosy to isolate themselves and make it obvious that they must be avoided. But, in this situation, when Jesus touches this man, He doesn’t become unclean, rather the unclean man becomes clean.

Both of these things, this man’s faith and the fact that Jesus made this man clean rather than becoming unclean Himself are important things for us to remember. They are important for us to remember because we can be tempted, in our own lives, to approach Jesus in a faithless way. Let me give you an example of what I mean by that. Let’s say you are struggling with depression. Everything feels a bit foggy, a bit muted. You’re struggling to have consistent joy throughout your day and struggling to have motivation. Let’s say that’s you and you’ve come to the point where you realize that you cannot fix it on your own. You’ve tried this and that, but now you realize that you must take it to the Lord.

We can be tempted, in that situation, to approach the Lord with very little faith. We might be tempted to think all sorts of lies. We think that Jesus doesn’t want to heal us, that He can’t heal us, or that in taking this to Him we are bothering Him. We might be tempted to think a lot of the things that this man with leprosy had to fight to overcome. But, once He did come to Jesus and he said, “Jesus, I know you can heal me. I know you are able. But I know that it must be your will, so I am here to ask that it be so.” And in response, Jesus did what might have seem impossible to many, He touched him and made him clean.

I want us to see here that Jesus heals those who seem unhealable, including us. That is who He is. He has compassionate on those who are outcasts, those who are lonely, those who society looks down upon. There is no issue that you are facing that Jesus cannot heal you from on this side of heaven. That doesn’t mean that He will heal you on this side of eternity, that isn’t promised, but He has promised to give you peace and joy that surpasses all understanding amidst it. And not only that, He has promised that once all is said and done, when your life here on Earth is over, you will be entirely healed.

Until then, we have been called to be a people of faith. A people who trust that Jesus is who He says He is. That He can heal the seemingly unhealable, that we are not bringing Him down when we take our worries and hurts to Him. We must place our faith in who Jesus has revealed Himself to be in His Word. That is what I want us to look at for our second point this morning.

2.) Jesus saves those who place their faith in Him

The man with leprosy wasn’t the only one to demonstrate great faith in our text this morning. In our second story, we read of a group of men who had real faith in Jesus. The story starts in verse 17 and we read that Jesus was teaching many different people. Among those people were Pharisees and teachers of the law who had come from all the surrounding areas to hear Jesus teach. And on this particular occasion, Jesus was teaching in a house, and it was incredibly crowded with people. So crowded in fact that when a group of men came bringing a paralytic man to Jesus, there was no way to get to Him.

However, these men were determined to get this paralytic man to Jesus. So, we read in verse 19, that they find a way on the roof, remove some of the roofing tiles, and lower the man on his bed through the roof. They lower him and put him right before Jesus. I’m sure everyone was looking on and thinking, “What is Jesus going to do? How is He going to respond to this?” Then we read, in verse 20, “And when he saw their faith, he said, ‘Man, your sins are forgiven you.’”

I want to stop here for a moment and consider what Jesus has just said. Why did Jesus forgiven this man? Because of their faith and their faith alone. So often times we think that we have to offer Jesus something more than our faith in order to be saved. So often we want to show Jesus all these things we have done because we think that might help our case a bit. There is a story that we’ll get to later in the Gospel of Luke, in chapter 18, that I think demonstrates this well. You can turn there if you’d like, Luke 18 starting in verse 18. There is a rich ruler who comes to Jesus and Luke records their interaction.

We read, “18 And a ruler asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 19 And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. 20 You know the commandments: ‘Do not commit adultery, Do not murder, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother.’” 21 And he said, “All these I have kept from my youth.” 22 When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “One thing you still lack. Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” 23 But when he heard these things, he became very sad, for he was extremely rich. 24 Jesus, seeing that he had become sad, said, “How difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! 25 For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” 26 Those who heard it said, “Then who can be saved?” 27 But he said, “What is impossible with man is possible with God.” 28 And Peter said, “See, we have left our homes and followed you.” 29 And he said to them, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers[b] or parents or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, 30 who will not receive many times more in this time, and in the age to come eternal life.”

The point of this story is not that Jesus wants your stuff or even that He wants you to give up your stuff. No, the point of this is that Jesus wants your heart. We talked about this last week. What Jesus desires is that you would place your faith in Him in such a way that you would be willing to forsake it all for Christ. He wants you to trust in Him and trust what He has said. And if we do that, if we place our faith in Him, that means that we treasure Him above all other things. That is what the rich young man missed. It isn’t that Jesus wanted his stuff, He wanted His heart, His faith.

In our story, Jesus healed this paralytic man because of their faith. He didn’t heal him because of who they were or because of what they could offer him. He didn’t heal them because they plead their case about all they had done or all they would do. It’s none of that. Jesus healed this man because they believed in Him, because they had such faith in who Jesus is that they were willing to go to extreme measures to place the paralytic man before Him. And when they did, what is impossible with man, was possible with God.

Before we go any further, I do want to make sure that you all don’t hear me wrong on this. I am not saying that you have to have perfect or extreme faith in order to be saved. In fact, later Jesus will say that with faith just the size of mustard seed you can move a mountain. Our lives are marked by times of great faith and times of little faith, and that doesn’t mean that our salvation is in limbo. That isn’t what I am saying. I am saying that in order to be saved, we must place our faith in Jesus. And that is the good news of Jesus Christ that we proclaim to the world. We don’t tell people, “Okay, so to be saved what you’re going to do is this.” And we start going through this big list of things that have to happen. That’s not it. What we say is that if you place your faith in Jesus, you will be saved. If you believe that you are sinner and that Christ died to save you, you will be saved. If you repent of your sins and place your faith in Jesus Christ, the seemingly impossible becomes possible. The once-in-a-lifetime happens. Jesus tells this man that his sins are forgiven because of their faith. We need to believe that is true.

I’m sure there were all sorts of mixed responses to this statement. The men who brought the paralytic man and the paralytic man himself were probably thinking, “Well, that’s not what we were expecting.” They had brought him thinking that Jesus would make Him be able to walk again, but Jesus forgave the man for his sins instead. We can speculate on their thoughts a bit, but we don’t have to speculate on the thoughts of everyone else in the room. In verse 21 we read that the scribes and Pharisees began to question what has happened, saying, “Who is this who speaks blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God alone?”

See, these scribes and Pharisees were well-versed in the law. They had dedicated their life to a devout and strict adherence to the law, and they knew that only God forgive can forgive sins. And they knew that Jesus, being a man, couldn’t forgive sins. Right? Well, not entirely. They were missing one critical detail, which is our final point this morning.

3.) Jesus can forgive sins because He is God

If I told you that I could run around the world so fast that you couldn’t even tell I had moved, what would say? You might say, “Okay, prove it.” And I said, “Well, I can’t prove it because it’s so fast that you can’t even tell.” How many of you would think I’m telling the truth? None of you. Well, that’s kind of what the scribes and Pharisees were thinking when Jesus said that this man’s sins were forgiven. There would be no way to prove whether or not this claim was true or not, because you can’t see whether or not someone has been forgiven for their sins. And since Jesus would have no way of proving it and they didn’t believe that He was God, they rejected this claim.

In verse 22 we see that Jesus realized this and perceived their thoughts. That is, He knows that they are doubting His ability forgive sins. And so Jesus, being all-wise, asked them this, “Why do you question in your hearts? Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven you,’ or to say, ‘Rise and walk’?” Now, this is a bit of a trick question because again, they are both really easy to say. Anyone can say these things; the real question is can someone do them. Jesus continues, in verse 24, and says, “ But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he said to the man who was paralyzed—“I say to you, rise, pick up your bed and go home.” 25 And immediately he rose up before them and picked up what he had been lying on and went home, glorifying God.”

If you’ll remember, at the beginning of this Gospel Luke says that he is writing this Gospel so that we might be certain concerning the things we have been taught. There is no doubt that Luke includes this story for that very reason. Jesus is making it clear that He has the authority to forgive sins because He is God. He didn’t tell the scribes and Pharisees, “You know what you’re right. Father, would you forgive this man?” He didn’t do that. Instead, what He did was show them that because He is the Son of man, because He is God, He can forgive sins. And not only that, but He proves it by causing the paralytic man to walk again. And that man stands up, grabs his bed, and walks home doing what? Glorifying the one who forgave Him and who healed Him, God. He went home glorying, Jesus Christ. But not just him, verse 26 tells us that everyone there were amazed, “…they glorified God and were filled with awe, saying, ‘We have seen extraordinary things today.’”

I’ve never seen something quite like this. I’ve never seen a paralytic man stand up and walk at the command of Jesus. I would waiver to bet that many of you haven’t seen something like that either. And actually, I remember wanting to see something like this so bad when I was a young believer. I wanted to see these miraculous things that I heard about in the Bible happen in front of me. I even remember specifically praying that the Lord would do something miraculous for me to see because I wanted to know that it was real.

But the truth is, these things were happening in front of me. In fact, they are happening in front of all of us, all the time. The Lord is healing broken hearts and broken marriages. He is giving peace to those with troubled minds. He is causing physical healing in people and giving others strength to endure physical suffering. He is showing compassion to the outcasts. And chief among them all, He is forgiving people for their sins, He is saving souls.

This is the kind of God we serve. Don’t let the wonders that He does for us and among us grow dull. Think on them, thank God for them, tell of them, and glorify God for them. I think that is the call of the text for us this morning, for us to consider who Jesus is and how we might respond. Jesus heals the those who seem unhealable, He saves those who place their in Him, and He forgives sins because He truly is God. May we exalt Christ above all other things in our life because of this.