Finding Forgiveness


Sermon by Wiley Lowry on January 16, 2022 Mark 2:1-12

Let’s turn in our Bibles to Mark chapter 2. You can find that on page 837 in the pew Bibles. Mark chapter 2. We’ve heard this morning, several times already, about the forgiveness of sin and we have seen that signified for us in our baptism, and now we turn to a passage that deals with the forgiveness of sin.

And there is a familiar summary of the Gospel that begins this way – “We are far worse sinners than we could ever imagine.” It doesn’t start sounding like good news, but that’s how the good news begins because our sin runs deep, it impacts everything that we do. It separates us from God, and we all need forgiveness. And that’s why the second part of that summary is so important to add into it – “We are far worse sinners than we could ever imagine, but we are far more loved and accepted and forgiven in Christ Jesus than we ever thought possible.” With Jesus, there is forgiveness. And that’s what Mark chapter 2 is about. It’s about Jesus having the authority to forgive sins. And you may be in the midst of fighting a particular sin in your life right now, or it might be the furthest thing from your mind, and yet what John Owen writes is that, “Forgiveness with God is our main concern in this world, and it is the sole foundation of all of our expectations of blessing in the world that is to come.” So let’s turn our attention this morning to rediscover forgiveness, perhaps, to find forgiveness, to find the One who forgives us, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Let’s pray before we read.

Our Father, we give You thanks for Your Word. We give You thanks for the clarity of the good news – that it confronts us in our sin, our need, our weakness, and the consequences that we all face because of those things. And yet it directs us to the solution, to the answer, to the good news of grace in Christ Jesus and forgiveness and freedom. So we pray that You would help us to do that as we look to Your Word today. And we pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.

Mark chapter 2, starting at verse 1:

“And when he returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home. And many were gathered together, so that there was no more room, not even at the door. And he was preaching the word to them. And they came, bringing to him a paralytic carried by four men. And when they could not get near him because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him, and when they had made an opening, they let down the bed on which the paralytic lay. And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ‘Son, your sins are forgiven.’ Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, ‘Why does this man speak like that? He is blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?’ And immediately Jesus, perceiving in his spirit that they thus questioned within themselves, said to them, ‘Why do you question these things in your hearts? Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise, take up your bed and walk’? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins’—he said to the paralytic—’I say to you, rise, pick up your bed, and go home.’ And he rose and immediately picked up his bed and went out before them all, so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, ‘We never saw anything like this!’”

The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the Word of our God endures forever.

We’ll look at this passage along three lines this morning. We’ll look at the ailment, the authority, and the awe that we find in these twelve verses.

The Ailment

First, we see the ailment. They weren’t looking for it, were they? Forgiveness was not their most pressing concern. It was not their top priority. Healing was. They came to Jesus because of the paralysis. Of course they did; of course they would do that. And we don’t know exactly what it was that the paralyzed man was suffering from, we don’t know what his condition was that caused his paralysis, but obviously he could not walk and it required four people to carry him around and take him wherever he wanted to go. And we know that in the world at this time it was not very friendly to those who suffered from a disability. If you remember in the stories in the Bible that we read about the deaf and the blind and the lame, they are often the ones in the Gospel stories who are forced to beg for food and beg for money, and there are other accounts from this time period that tell us that those with a disability were associated with shame and even disgust. Sometimes it was said that they were not even worthy to live. So there was a stigma attached to disability, to this paralysis. And there were also challenges that this man would have faced in almost every part of his life.

And if you suffer from the limitations of a certain physical condition, you know that very well, especially around here. It can be hard just getting in and out of the church sometimes. I had our friend, Charles Scrivener, told me one time – he teaches at the blind school at UMC – and he told me that Belhaven sidewalks make a good place to teach a blind person how to walk with a walking stick because he said if you can learn to do it on Belhaven sidewalks, you can do it anywhere! And so we know in our area how hard it can be just to get around with physical limitations. And if you are a caregiver for someone who has been bedridden or who has a special need, you know the fatigue. You know the emotional toll that comes with taking care of a person like that. And I sometimes think about Joni Eareckson Tada. She is such a godly example in extreme physical suffering, but she talks about her getting ready and getting started with each day is a two-hour process of exercises and hygiene and preparing her food. And then it’s all over again at the end of the day. It’s the same thing – two more hours of getting her ready for bed.

And her case is extreme, maybe it’s more extreme than the paralytic in Mark chapter 2, but when we meet this man in Mark chapter 2, the paralytic, we are talking about real suffering. We are talking about constant challenges that he would have faced. And who wouldn’t be desperate to get help for this man? And they were desperate. We can tell just how desperate they were because they started taking a roof apart just to get to Jesus. And they make this hole in the roof to lower the paralytic down to Jesus. And this is one of those memorable stories in the gospels, isn’t it? We love to hear these stories about people who are fighting through the crowds or overcoming some obstacle just to get to Jesus. You think about Zacchaeus. He couldn’t see, he couldn’t get to Jesus because of his short stature, and so he climbed up in the tree to see Jesus. Or maybe the woman who had been suffering from a bleeding condition for years and years and she pressed against the crowd just to touch the hem of Jesus’ garment to be healed from her condition. That’s what’s going on here in this passage. Their top priority was to get to Jesus.

But what happens when they get there? We find that Jesus takes this encounter in an unexpected direction because He saw their faith. And when He saw their faith, He said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” They were there for a physical condition, but Jesus takes that opportunity to address a spiritual issue. And they are more concerned about an immediate problem, but Jesus goes to an eternal matter. He takes them to the need for the forgiveness of sins. And even while He does that, He doesn’t chastise them for coming to Him for healing. No, He receives them into His presence. He commends them for their faith and He actually heals the man of his paralysis. But we can find from this passage that clearly, in light of all those things, their most desperate problem, the most pressing ailment that this man faced was not his paralysis. It was his sin, and it was the need for forgiveness. Whether we recognize that or not, forgiveness of sin is our greatest need. It’s our greatest concern. You see, sin is not a disability. Sin is death. It’s separation from God. Sin corrupts and distorts and destroys everything. It cuts us off from God and it cuts us off from the blessings of God and instead we are deserving of the curse and wrath of God. And sin ruins everything.

We prayed for The Mustard Seed a few minutes ago and I was, this past summer, at the funeral of a man who was a former Mustard Seedster, Bill Brown. And at Bill Brown’s funeral, I went and I was not prepared. I wasn’t emotionally prepared for attending his funeral because a number of people stood up and shared memories of Bill. Bill was a former member of this congregation. He would faithfully attend here for years. But there were all sorts of comments about Bill Brown. The Seedsters stood up and said, “Bill Brown was my friend. I loved Bill Brown. I’m going to miss Bill Brown.” One of the workers at The Mustard Seed said that she would hear him outside his room at night and he would say a prayer and he would sing a hymn and then he would sing Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. And there was just story after story of how gentle and kind and patient and loving Bill was. And he was all of those things, not perfectly, but he was kind and gentle and a loving man. I left that funeral in tears. And I also left thinking, “I am such a jerk. And I am so discontent so often. And I get worried and stressed about the smallest things.”

The Authority

And I realized my biggest problem, our biggest problem, is sin. And we can busy ourselves with the pursuit of all sorts of things in this life, even good things – it could be health and comfort or success and our rights or our reputation, but what we really need, what we really need more than anything else, what really sets us free is what Jesus says to the paralytic in Mark chapter 2. He says, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” You see what Jesus does there. Jesus is taking the opportunity in an immediate need, a felt need, and He takes that opportunity to redirect the man and to point him to his greatest need, to point him to who Jesus really is. And Jesus does that, so oftentimes, in our lives. Doesn’t He? When we think about those things that are our biggest concerns or our deepest longing, what do those things go back to? What do they get back to? They get back to our need of Jesus, our need for forgiveness, to see who Jesus really is and what He can really do in our lives. It shows us in this passage the authority of Jesus. “Who is able to forgive sins?” the scribes thought to themselves, rather suspiciously. “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” they ask in verse 7.

You know what? They were right. “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” The scribes, if they knew anything, they knew their Bibles; they knew the Hebrew scriptures and they knew what the scriptures said to them. That “the Lord is a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. He keeps steadfast love to thousands, forgetting iniquity and transgressions and sin,” as Exodus chapter 34 says. And what does Micah say? Micah says, “Who is a God like You, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of His inheritance. He does not retain His anger forever but He delights in steadfast love. He will again have compassion on us and He will tread our iniquities under foot and He will cast our sins into the depths of the sea.” That’s what the Old Testament is all about. And as you would see the sacrifice after sacrifice after sacrifice in the Old Testament system, it was saying to the people, “There is a substitute for you and God is sparing you His wrath. He is showing you His mercy. He is a God of covenant mercy, of steadfast love. He is a forgiving God.” Only God forgives sins. The scribes were right. They recognized that, at least intellectually, in their minds and in their heads, but not in their hearts.

And what they didn’t realize was that Jesus bore the authority of God, as God, to forgive their sins. They didn’t recognize that and so they say, “This is blasphemy! This man is claiming to do something that only God can do. He can’t talk like this!” And yet Jesus says to the man, “Rise, take up your bed and walk.” Jesus is showing the scribes, He’s showing the crowds, He’s showing the paralytic and His friends that if He has the authority to speak and to heal, then He has the authority to forgive sins. That by His healing the man, He is showing that He is divine, that He has divine power and origin. And He says in verse 9, “Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise, take up your bed and walk’?” So it’s one thing to say, “Your sins are forgiven,” but there’s no way to verify that or validate that. But, to say to the paralytic, “Stand up, take your bed and walk,” that’s a whole different story. Either he stands up and walks out or he doesn’t. Either Jesus is able to heal or He isn’t. And so Jesus says, “So that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins, I say to you, ‘Rise, pick up your bed and go home.’ And immediately” – “immediately” is one of those favorite words for Mark in his gospel and you’ll find it over and over again that he is saying, “immediately this” or “immediately that” – carrying on this action quickly to show us who Jesus is and to get us to the cross. “Immediately the man rose, he picked up his bed, and he went out before them all.”

And the point of this miracle is to show us that Jesus is able both to work the healing and to grant pardon for sin. In other words, Jesus is able to do what only God can do. He bears the authority of God. Jesus is the Messiah. He is the Christ. And that is what the Gospel of Mark is all about. Mark begins in verse 1 of his gospel, “This is the Gospel, the beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” And then the gospel carries on to its highpoint, to its climax in chapter 8 verse 29 when Jesus asks His disciples, “Who do people say that I am and who do you say that I am?” and Peter makes that bold confession – “You are the Christ.” And then we come to the climax of the gospel where Mark is so eager to get us to see the resurrection and it demonstrates that Jesus is the Christ. He is the One who brings salvation. And in Jesus’ resurrection, what is mortal, what is death, what is the consequences of sin, it is swallowed up by life in Jesus’ resurrection. And that’s what Jesus is saying when He refers to Himself as, “The Son of Man.” It is a Messianic title that we find way back in Daniel chapter 7.

And the way to enjoy the blessings of Jesus Christ is by faith, to come to Him in faith. It’s by recognizing who He is and looking to Him in dependence and trust. One writer says here that, “Faith is not merely intellectual assent or an attitude. No, faith, as we see in this passage, is trying to get near to Jesus.” It’s doing anything. It’s doing everything to get to Jesus because that is the only way to get rid of the guilt of our sin. It’s the only way to get rid of the burden of the guilt that we all face and that we all carry apart from Jesus.

And then this passage shows us even more than that. On top of forgiveness, we find that Jesus also has the power to heal and to bring life. And so if we want to be free from the guilt and shame of our sin, only Jesus can make us free. But if we want to experience true and real healing in life, only Jesus can do that too. And He will raise us up in the last day as a new creation with new bodies, free of sickness and pain and sorrow and death. If you want to discover forgiveness, if you want to find forgiveness today, look to Jesus. Trust in Him. Draw near to Him by faith. And if you have trusted in Jesus, if you have looked to Him in faith, remember again from Mark chapter 2 – Jesus forgives sin. It’s that simple. And yet we need to hear it over and over again. Jesus forgives sin and He has done that for you if you have trusted in Him for salvation. He has the authority to forgive your sin, and if you are forgiven in Him, you are forgiven completely. “There is no more condemnation,” as Gary read for us earlier. “There is no more condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” “Darkness, sorrow, storms you may meet,” John Owen rights, “Darkness, sorrow, storms you may meet, but your eternal condition is secure in the covenant of God. Your soul is bound up in the bundle of life.” You’re safe there. You’re safe in that life that comes through Christ Jesus. No condemnation. No separating you from God and His love.

The Awe

And I am convinced that we need to be reminded again and again of the forgiveness of sin, of the assurance of our pardon and salvation. We need to rediscover forgiveness. We need to rediscover the freedom that we have in Christ and in Christ alone because it seems too good to be true. Doesn’t it? It seems like our sin couldn’t possibly have been dealt with to that measure. William Faulkner is sometimes quoted as saying, “History isn’t dead; it’s not even really past.” And we think about our sin that way sometimes too. Don’t we? Surely our sin can’t be dead. It’s not even past. We still deal with it and struggle with it. But what this passage is saying to us is that Jesus really does forgive sin and shame and guilt and regret of sin are gone forever. They are to be replaced by joy and wonder as we come to be confronted with who Jesus is and what He has done for us by His death and resurrection. Forgiveness, you see, should fill us with awe. It should fill us with wonder and praise and joy.

And we see some of that awe, don’t we, in verse 12. It says that “They were amazed and glorified God.” And they said, “We never saw anything like this.” We never saw anything like this. There is no one like Jesus. There is no one who has this compassion and this power and this authority and this grace. And the only right response is to bow before Him in amazement and awe and worship. Why do we need to regain that? Why do we need to maintain a sense of awe and amazement at who Jesus is and what He has done in our forgiveness? We need to regain that awe, to maintain that sense of awe, because we have to deal with our own sin. And so oftentimes we get stuck in a rut of guilt and shame. We get stuck in a rut of struggling with one sin in particular, over and over again. And yet, when we stay there, and when we fail to repent and to go to God, to go to Christ and to find repentance, when we are stuck in our sin and in our guilt, what are we doing? We are implying that Jesus is not enough, that He is not sufficient to forgive our sins. So God is calling us to get out of that and to find freedom, to find forgiveness, and to find true life apart from our sin in forgiveness in Christ Jesus.

And we all have to deal with the sins of others as well. We can get stuck in the ruts of holding grudges and keeping score with others around us. There was a song lyric recently that said, “It wasn’t easy to be happy for you. I took the poison praying you’d feel it too.” And that’s a definition of bitterness. To take the poison and hope that others would take it too. And oftentimes we do that in our relationships and we hold onto grudges; we keep score. In particularly in our marriages and in our families. Marriage and family and close friends in the church, that’s the proving ground for forgiveness. Have we really come to grips with what Jesus has done for us, in that He has forgiven us and washed us free from our sin so that now we can go and be ready to forgive others when they sin against us? Someone has said before, “You can tell how guilty someone is by how guilty you feel in their presence, but you can also tell how forgiven someone is by how forgiven you feel in their presence.” Can’t we take the forgiveness that we have in Christ Jesus, the freedom that we have, to then go and extend that forgiveness to other people?

And then as we come to worship, and as we come to serve God in all of life, we need that sense of awe at what Jesus has done for us in forgiving us of our sins because if we don’t realize that we are going to come here today to worship out of a sense of obligation and duty only instead of a sense of joy and amazement and wonder. And we are going to go out and serve God in our different callings and different spheres of our lives and we are going to do that in a way that we just hope not to face His anger, we hope not to mess up, when in fact He is saying, “You are forgiven. Go out and serve Me with joy, with freedom, to love others, to do for others as you would have them do unto yourself, to love your neighbor as yourself, to forgive your enemies, to love even your enemies.” That comes from the forgiveness that comes from Jesus Christ.

And I read from Micah chapter 7 a few minutes ago, that passage that says, “Who is a God like You? He has cast our sin into the depths of the sea.” I don’t know what sea Micah had in mind when he read that, but I like to think that he was thinking of the Dead Sea. And what we know about the Dead Sea is that the Dead Sea is so salty and it’s such an elevation below sea level that when someone goes into the Dead Sea, what happens? They float. You don’t sink in the Dead Sea. You stay on top of the water. And I like to think that Micah has that in mind when he says, “Your sin, our sin, is cast into the depths of the sea.” It sinks to the bottom. Our sin can’t live, it can’t come back to haunt us, it can’t condemn us, it can’t separate us from God. It’s gone forever because of what Jesus has done by His life, death and resurrection. He is sufficient. He has the authority to forgive sins. Let’s go in a sense of wonder and awe of who He is and serve Him with joy. Let’s thank Him for His forgiveness.

Let’s pray.

Father, we thank You for Your Word to us this morning. We thank You for Your grace, Your amazing grace, that while we were lost, You found us, and when we were blind, You gave us sight. When we were stricken by the consequences of sin and death, You gave us life and salvation in Your presence forever. Would You send us out from here with a renewed sense of Your awe – an awe for You and of what You have done for us in the Gospel. Thank You for our Savior, Jesus. We love Him and we serve Him with joy and gladness. And we pray all of this in His name, amen.

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