Good morning, friends! As I said last week, we’re going to be starting a Lent series entitled: “Costly Confrontations.” In this series, we’ll be sending the next few Sundays looking at some encounters Jesus had with the Pharisees and experts of the Law. These are the tough encounters that ultimately lead to Jesus’ death. After all, that’s what Lent is really about: Lent is a season that Christians have observed for the last ~2,000 ish years. It’s a 40 day prep season where we commit to things like additional scripture reading, fasting, prayer, and meditation on Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection.

To help us prepare our hearts, I wanted us to look at some encounters that Jesus has with the religious leaders of this day. Because here’s the thing: Jesus’ death was not a spur of the moment decision. There are decisive events that happen in his ministry that led to religious leaders plotting to kill Jesus because he’s either rocking the boat, claiming to be God, or upsetting their interpretation of the Law.

So with that in mind, our first costly confrontation will be looking at Luke 5:17-26. I actually put that on the back of your notes sheet for easy access. No bible apps allowed ;) This is a well-known bible story but I’m really excited about it because it is just so beautiful. Let’s read God’s word together.

This is the word of the Lord. Since God’s word is active and alive, what can we learn from these passages of Scripture?

Faith will lead you to obstacles but they can be overcome.

At the heart of this story, you’ll find bold faith displayed by the man who was paralyzed and his friends. They encountered numerous obstacles that needed to be overcome. You can see this in a few ways:

1.      They carry their friend an unknown amount of distance to be healed but really, they have no idea if he will be healed. If you have ever carried another human being, you know how exhausting that is even if there are others helping you.

2.     When the crowd is too big for them to pass through, they decide to climb up to the roof. Destroy some tiles in the process (tiles were only available to rich people so this is a rich person’s house and they’re likely very particular about their roof), pull out the mud and straw that was underneath, and lower the man down to Jesus.

3.     Jesus is in an extremely crowded house that is extremely tiny by our standards. Rather than putting their friend anywhere, they lowered him down right in front of Jesus – almost as if to say, now you can’t ignore him Jesus. You need to do something.

4.     In most ancient cultures, people who had a physical disability were often second-tier citizens and treated extremely poorly. It’s why most of the healings that Jesus and the early church did featured people who had physical disabilities and were also homeless. That’s why one of the questions folks asked Jesus before he healed someone else was: Jesus, since this man has a disability, who sinned – the man or his parents? And Jesus says, you guys are totally missing the point. So, this man who needed healing and his friends are willing to endure the looks from the crowd or the ridicule that they may have encountered.

5.     When Jesus tells the man that he should get up and walk, the man believes him and does it. I don’t think we grasp how scary that would be. The man could have thought that Jesus was some scam artist and he could have believed the lies that God had punished him with this. But he doesn’t believe those lies, he believes and trusts Jesus and he walks.

Despite these obstacles facing them, the man and his friends worked to overcome them. Why? They had faith that perhaps the stories about this teacher from Nazareth were true. Maybe they had heard about Jesus’ powerful statements in Luke 4 where he says he came to help the lame or paralyzed walk. Or that Jesus came to save and heal those who are marginalized by society. The point is: they had faith even when they encountered valid obstacles. They trusted that the challenges weren’t going to matter in the end once a healing took place. And they were right – Jesus saw their faith and responded to it.

For us, I think we sometimes think that obstacles mean God’s not in favor of something we’re pursuing. Or we think obstacles are just a plot of the enemy. Those things can be true sometimes. But how many examples in Scripture do we see obstacles but the person has faith and the obstacles are taken care of by God? Moses leads his people out of Egypt only to find the Red Sea and their enemies breathing down their neck – that’s a valid obstacle. Moses has faith. God parts the Red Sea. As Paul continues his missionary journeys, he gets imprisoned with his pal, Silas – prison is a massive obstacle. But they have faith and they sing and pray all night long only to cause an earthquake. Paul ends up sharing the Gospel with the jailer who professes faith in Christ and gets his whole family baptized in the same night. What would have happened if Moses or Paul saw those obstacles and just given up?

Obstacles can be opportunities for us to exercise our faith. Or as the Figs sing in Lemonade by Forrest Frank “if life is always, you’re probably doing something wrong.”

Additionally, what are you willing to do to get people to Jesus? Are you willing to encounter obstacles in hopes that they will be changed? Are you compelled by Jesus enough to bring people to him or at least share him with them?

If you fix your eyes on Jesus, you’re willing to endure those challenges because you trust he’s got your best interest at heart. When God sees your faith, he is going to show up for you – just not always in the way you may have been hoping for. With that in mind, we can learn something else from this story:

Jesus gives us what we need, not what we may have expected.

Now, we pick up in the middle of this story. The man has just been lowered in front of Jesus. The friends and the man are likely on the edge of their seat waiting to see what Jesus is going to do. They can’t wait to see what he’s going to do but then Jesus does something unexpected. Instead of jumping in to healing this man, he says: “Friend, your sins are forgiven.” I imagine the man and his friends being like: dude, that’s not why I’m here. I’m here because of my legs, I can’t walk.

Why does Jesus do this? Jesus often has deeper and bigger purposes than we can fully comprehend. When Jesus tells the man his sins are forgiven, he’s acknowledging a few things:

1.      This man’s biggest problem was not something physical. His biggest problem was in the spiritual realm. Like all of us, he was still in need of forgiveness for the wrongs he has done.

2.     Because of the forgiveness Jesus offered the man, he calls him: “Friend.”Son in the ESV. For those of who have professed faith in Christ, Jesus calls us friends too.

3.     Jesus can forgive sins because sin is an offense against him as he reveals that he is the long-awaited Son of Man that Daniel saw in a vision from Daniel 7. You can’t offer forgiveness for something that’s not done to you. If one of you told me that you are cheating on your spouse and I said: “I forgive you.” That would make zero sense. Only your spouse can forgive you. The only person who can offer forgiveness is the one who was sinned against. So when Jesus offers forgiveness, he is saying he is God because sin is an act of rebellion against God.

4.     To demonstrate that he is indeed the Son of Man, Jesus doesn’t just address the heart issue. He goes a step further and physically heals the man. Throughout Jesus’ ministry, healings served a two-fold purpose: one they demonstrated what life looks like in the situation where Jesus is reigning in the situation and where life isn’t marked by sin or death and two they confirmed his authority as the son of God. Moses authority was confirmed by the miracles he could do. Elijah same deal. Early church same.

So, Jesus is taking this opportunity to accomplish a lot. He’s reversing the effects of sin and hell by offering forgiveness + healing someone who was paralyzed as sicknesses are an effect of the fall. But, he’s not stopping there – he wants to make a point that he is doing this because he is the long-awaited Messiah. So, Jesus gives us what we need but not what we may have been expecting. The man came to be healed but he found out that he had just met the Messiah and needed forgiveness.

As we prepare our hearts for Jesus’ death and resurrection, this is ultimately at the heart of our faith.

When Jesus died, his closest friends were in mourning. They were expecting Jesus to usher in a new kingdom for Israel by living not by dying. But Jesus knew better – he knew that is in his death, he would absorb the punishment for his people’s sin and break the chains of hell’s power over us. And then in his resurrection, he would create a new Kingdom – not one founded on war, political power, or worldly strength but a kingdom founded on humility, self-giving and sacrificial love, and peace between God, man, and one another.

Some of you may be thinking that you’re pretty good at knowing what you need. Let me tell you something: you’re not. When we get the things, we think we ‘need’, we’re often left wanting more. If we get a raise at work, we often wishing we had just a little bit more. If we get a good dessert, we’re often wishing we had just a little bit more or that we ordered something else. When we get what we say we need, we’re often dissatisfied with the outcome eventually and then we have new needs. Jesus knew this with the man he healed which is why:  he offered him forgiveness first and insight into who Jesus second and then physical healing third.

Likewise, this truth that Jesus gives us what we need but not what we may have expected applies to our lives. There may be times where we are laboring in prayer for God to respond one way but he ends up responding in a different way. God never withholds good things from us but sometimes a valid response to our prayers is no, there’s something better or not yet. In prayer, God will either gives us what we ask for OR he will give us what we would have asked for if we knew everything he knows. How many of us can say we were dealt a bad hand in something and felt almost abandoned by God in the moment? But now, we can see how God gave us exactly what we needed even if we couldn’t see it at the time.

When we look back and see what God has done, that leaves us with only one option: to praise him!

When God receives the glory, our lives receive a joy that multiplies.

How does this story end then? The experts of the Law seem extremely ticked off by Jesus’ claim that he can forgive sins. The Law experts rightfully assert that no one can forgive sins but God alone. They rightfully accuse Jesus of blasphemy, if Jesus is not God.

Jesus asks them: which is easier to say sins are forgiven or to heal someone? In theory, it is easy for me to say sins are forgiven than to totally heal someone who is paralyzed. Right? Just to prove that Jesus is indeed God, he does both. I wish I could say with confidence that the experts in the Law saw that and joined the crowd in praising God. But in further reading of Luke 5, it tells us that they continued to criticize Jesus for eating with tax collectors and sinners. They didn’t want to give God the glory for this healing; they deceived themselves into thinking it was something else. They seemed apathetic towards his power and perhaps you yourself have grown apathetic towards Christ.

On the other hand, when the man was healed, he stood up and went home praising God. Can you imagine the joy that this man felt? He was paralyzed for who knows how long. And he has an encounter with Jesus Christ that radically heals him in a variety of ways: spiritual healing because his sins are forgiven, physical healing because he can walk, social healing because he is no longer an outcast, and economic healing because he will now be able to work. And the coolest thing? He walks out praising God and that joy spreads to others.

Luke says everyone was amazed! Everyone was praising and glorifying God when this took place. This happens elsewhere when Jesus talks to the Samaritan woman at the well. She is so full of joy that Jesus knows her, the joy spreads to the village. And the people of that village come to faith in Jesus. This is how the Jesus movements started.

Worship and prayer team, you can start making your way up here.

Now, my dear friends: you may not have a testimony that this man had. You may not be able to say: I couldn’t walk and Jesus healed me. But, you have a story that is worth sharing. If you are a Christian here today, you have a story of God intervening in your life – not on account of anything that you have done but solely on account of what Christ has done for you. That way, God gets the glory and praise for that. As you share that and remember that, it leads you to joy as you remember that you’re not what you once were or what you could have been. The old is gone, the new has come.

When’s the last time you shared that story with someone? If we want to see an act of God like the one we just read about, perhaps it’s time for us to start sharing testimonies with each other and with non-believers. I wonder what God could do.

Like I’ve been mentioning, we are holding a Good Friday and Easter Sunday service. This is a perfect avenue for you to take a step of faith and invite someone who is not a Christian to those services. You can share your story with them and you’ll give glory to God. You can express real joy at what Jesus has done in your life. Who knows what could happen? In the story we read today, it led to everyone present to praise God. Let’s pray that the same could be said for us with those we invite to Easter.

Let’s show that our faith isn’t just a set of beliefs but rather something that we take action on to get people to Jesus. Let’s believe that Jesus will show up for us and give us what we need. And let’s believe that this is all for God’s glory and our deep joy.

Amen? As we prepare our hearts to sing once again, if something is stirring in your heart or you need prayer, there are folks who are ready to pray with you. If you don’t have a prayer need, sing your heart out. Joyful makes God happy, you know that right?

Let me pray as we prepare our hearts to sing once again.