Jesus Brings New Life

Good morning again. Hello again. My name is Ben. I'm an elder here at Lowertown. Like I said before, my wife Emily and I have been attending Lowertown since we started about eight years ago. We have a daughter, Sophie, who's just about 2, and we've got another one on the way in January. I am preaching for Brian this week to give him a break. I don't typically preach. It's good for him, good for us, and good for me. And we are on week six now in our Mark series, and this is going to take us through 2026. Today's sermon is called Jesus Brings New Life. Now the handout says something else. It's okay, it's just words on a page. But this is what I'm choosing to call the title. Brian thought it needed a different type. That's not true. I'm kidding. As I was preparing today's sermon, I was reminded of a classic book that perhaps you've read, A Tale of Two Cities. This is by Charles Dickens, in case you didn't know. And I'm not going to do a TED Talk on this. The book is full of Christian symbols that people have talked to death, I am sure. But at a high level and kind of just at the beginning of the story is this kind of a synopsis. So Dr. Manette is featured there in the center, if you can kind of tell. And he is the focus at the start. This is like pre revolution France, very old setting. Dr. Manette is falsely imprisoned by this noble family in the Bastille. And he's in there for, I think it's like 18 years or something specific like that. But he is traumatized by this experience. While he's in prison, he learns how to make shoes. I don't know why that's in there, but anyway, he's traumatized, learns to make shoes, and then is released from prison. And then these revolutionaries, they take custody of him and they take care of him. But while he's in their custody, all he can do is just continue to make shoes. He's stuck in this traumatic darkness. These same people then get a hold of his daughter Lucy, who thought he was just dead, you know, over this time that she thought her father had passed away. Then Lucy is beckoned to meet Dr. Manet because he is stuck in this darkness and Lucy needs to go from England to France. And this journey she takes is sped along by this recalled to life. And that is kind of the running theme throughout the book. The whole book has a lot of symbols, different characters going through These resurrection stories. Now in that book, we see that Dr. Manette is. He's not fully healed or anything like that. He at different beats in the journey in the story. Throughout the book, he kind of regresses and goes back to shoemaking when you know these stressors are coming in. Today I'm going to stop talking about that book now. Today Jesus brings true life is what we are going to see. So last week the Brian took us through the end of chapter one, and this was kind of the main action. Mark 1:41 moved with pity. Jesus stretched out his hand and touched the leper and said to him, I will be cleaned. And we saw that Jesus significantly, very significantly touched this leper who would normally have to shout in the community, I am unclean. Unclean. Where people would back away from this man. So Jesus reaches out, touches him unto and cleanses him. And Bryan then also made this connection with Psalm 51:7. Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. And the main point was that Jesus heals and cleanses us. Not just relieves that physical issue, but really makes us right with God, cleanses us that we can approach him and that his holiness, Jesus holiness is greater than our uncleanness. So on to our passage this morning. Again, this is in Mark 2. We're going to be covering verses one through 12. And you know, I like to do this. If there's one thing that Taylor Swift and I have in common, it's that we tend to do the same thing. Anyone? Huh? The people over there. Okay, so we're going to kind of do this the way I tend to do these. We're going to take our time to walk through just what is happening in this passage that we can better answer the question. So. So what? So I'll begin here. Chapter two, verse one. And when he, Jesus 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. Oh, sorry. 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, the paralytic, 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. Okay, so as always, we want to stay grounded in the context. So let's go through a geography lesson again. This is in the region of Galilee still, as we were last week. He's in the town of Capernaum, which is on the north side of the Sea of Galilee. You can't see that, can you? That's why I put that red circle there. So it's in the northern parts of Israel. You know, we're away from Jerusalem, if that's in your mind or anything. His fame is quickly growing. We have this packed house and we see the. This small scene of his teaching and healing. Okay, so let's get into the nitty gritty a little. This healing is not like the leper. So we'll take a look at that scene again from last week. Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched the leper and said to him, I will be clean. And kind of just different details, you know, he's not necessarily touching and pulling up the paralytic or anything like that. And with the leper, he doesn't talk about sins. Yep. Then in 22, we see that a crowd is packed into the space. The door was full. Maybe even people are sitting inside the windows. Probably people in the streets even trying and hoping to hear something from Jesus. And yet there was this little detail. The scribes had room. And this is kind of interesting. In two, six, you now some of the scribes were sitting there questioning in their hearts. So I like to picture it. You know, they have maybe some room. You know, they're probably relaxed. They're not shoulder to shoulder. These are scribes. These are lawyers, experts in the law for the Jews of this community. Highly respected. They likely had some kind of deference from the crowd to that maybe made some space for them. The scribes were, as you saw, skeptical of what Jesus had to say, and maybe they even felt some sense of like, responsibility or it's up to us to weep out this false teacher. And then what we see is that the man's friends made room. There wasn't a room, but they made room. When they could not get near Jesus because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him. And I like to think of mud and some straw maybe getting on these scribes, because if they were sitting in there in this house, and Jesus was in the house, they're probably right below the roof, right? A little funny, just going to sneak right past you, bring down this guy. But the main question is why? Why would the friends of this paralytic do this? And that was because of what Jesus was offering, his healing and his teaching. And so what we see is that just in a sentence, Mark tells us he was preaching the Word to them. Jesus was preaching the Word. And I want you to circle if you have that booklet. We only have a couple left. I don't even know if we have any left. But we have booklets for the book of Mark here through the study circle, that phrase, the word. Now this word gets a lot of mileage in Greek. The word in Greek means word. So that's cool. But like I said, I already made the Taylor Swift joke. We're not going to dive deep into the Greek though. I like to do that. So instead of the word study, what I thought we could do is look at the other gospel accounts sort of at the beginning and see what it was that Jesus was teaching to understand what is the word that Mark was referencing when we had started, or maybe the second week, I can't quite remember, we did look at this in Mark itself. In the account of mark in 1:15, Jesus says, the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel. And this is the main idea, repent and believe in the gospel. But even there, you can imagine that Jesus wasn't just saying this sentence ad nauseam, you know, for hours, just repeating this phrase over and over again. So it still is this question of, well, what is captured in the Gospel. So what else in Matthew, same thing, 4, 17. Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Jesus is saying, this new thing has begun, this long awaited kingdom of God, of heaven is at hand. It's beginning now. And he's really presenting himself as God's Messiah. It's still brief though. And I would contend that Jesus isn't just saying these, you know, eight or nine words over and over again. So what else do we see? Well, next in Matthew is the Sermon on the Mount 5 through 7. And in this, at a high level, high level, Jesus is teaching things about God's comfort. You know, blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. He teaches us how to pray, and he sets this high bar of holiness in that sermon. And that sermon likely took place in Galilee, though the precise location is unknown, but it's about the same time. And then to cap that off, that passage off the chapter seven ends with kind of a similar description of what is likely in the crowd. In Mark 2:7, 28 says the crowds were astonished at his teaching. So Jesus is presenting himself as one, equal or better than the scribes who are there, kind of checking them out. In Luke chapter 4:18 to 19, Jesus is reading from the book of Isaiah in a synagogue. And he's actually in his hometown of Nazareth, which is in the region of Galilee. This is after he's tempted in the wilderness. And the narrative right before these verses says, after that he was filled with the power of the Spirit and then went about ministering throughout Galilee. And then he's here in Nazareth and says this. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. And again, he's announcing this kingdom, this new kingdom, and here presenting himself as God's Messiah, God's chosen one to bring in that kingdom. The reaction of the crowd in this scene was very negative. Here in the synagogue, him pronouncing him to essentially his family, friends, they were like, who do you think you are? We know you. And you're saying that you are God's Messiah. So then lastly, in John, John chapter five, we don't get much in Galilee. We get a few scenes. One is the wedding at in Cana, where he turns water into wine. But then this is just kind of the first bit of crowd work, so to speak. In John, we have a little scene with Nicodemus, a religious leader at the time. We have the scene with Samaritan woman where then she actually goes and draws in her city. So still something there. But then here is sort of a first, like two leaders to a crowd. He says this. You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life. And it is they that bear witness about me. Yet you refused Come to me that you may have life. I have come in my Father's name. And so here he points to the Scriptures which he had read elsewhere in Nazareth, that passage from Isaiah. But the point with these references is this, that they are likely in the mix of Jesus's teaching, talking about life, that he has come as God's Messiah. He uses the term Father to talk about him, and that this new kingdom is coming. I think doing this can kind of clarify a misconception that right away in the Gospels, if you're serious about reading the Bible, you can see that Jesus is not coming just to be a moral teacher or just to show people a new way of life, or even only to die for our sake. But he came for all that and more, right? He's bringing healing, he's announcing this kingdom. Okay, we're going to go back to the story now. So two, five. And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic son, your sins are forgiven. Jesus perceives something about the faith of this man, the faith of his friends. And we see Jesus take on this very pastoral and kind of priestly role to address this man as son and then also to pronounce his sins forgiven. But again, clearly the scribes are bothered by this. So in verse seven, they say, why does this man speak like that? He is blaspheming. Who can forgive sins but God alone? But obviously in hindsight, and we have the whole scene here, it's kind of this lobbed up softball when they ask that question, who but God alone? And so Jesus responds, and he says, 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, you scribes 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 so Jesus does only what God could do to prove his power to forgive. He shows his power to heal. And he does that in a word, very powerful when you think about the creation story of God speaking in into existence the universe with just a word. And in the end it says that the paralytic 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. So in the end, the crowd and even the scribes themselves were in awe at what had just happened. Okay, so let's recap kind of what we've seen. Three main things Jesus continues To show his divinity. At this part in Mark, we have friends bringing someone to Jesus and we see a resurrection and Jesus in this distinct messianic role with all three of these. Okay, let's look at Jesus's divinity again. That you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins. I say to you, rise. We see Jesus's divinity, especially here at the end when this, this man rising demonstrates his ability to forgive, his capacity to forgive, not just this spiritual dimension to it, but a physical one as well. And again, with these friends, they came bringing to. To him to Jesus, a paralytic carried by four men. They removed the roof above him, they let down the bed. This is a serious effort. And it's kind of this awkward audacity to think in this culture, you know, maybe they know that there are scribes in there, but they're just going to punch a hole in the roof anyway. I mean, I wonder who is hosting Jesus exactly that. You know, they kind of just ignored whoever owned the house and punched a hole in the roof. The man himself likely wanted to see Jesus. So certainly there's that to keep in mind. But I think I wanted to kind of ask this question or put this thought in your head that we should reflect on what we'd risk that a friend might know Christ. And then in verse 12, this story of resurrection, the scene of resurrection, and he rose and immediately picked up his bed and went out before them all so that they were all amazed and glorified God. And so this is the tie to that tale of Two Cities story. Recalled to life. The man likely didn't know, or perhaps just forgot, depending on the nature of this ailment he had, didn't know or forgot what wholeness was. And we too can miss righteousness for our own sins clouding our vision. We too need resurrection. But in the end, for those of us who have accepted Christ, life is the final word for us, and it is to God's glory. Just as in this story. I wanted to then kind of cap all this with reading a passage from Ephesians 2 to kind of sum up this and hopefully really internalize this for us. But I'll just read this here. Ephesians 2, verse 4. But God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved and raised us up with him. So those of us who have gone to Christ for healing and forgiveness are resurrected, just as these Verses describe and then just a little bit later picking up in verse 10, Paul says this. For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. And what I like to talk about often is that we have a purpose built into our resurrection. I think it's curious to think about what would be the next day for this resurrected man, for this paralytic. What would his next day look like? He'd probably be telling a lot of people about what had happened. He'd probably, I mean with a new lease on life, maybe not the next day or the next day, but at some point he'd probably be finding work with pleasure, you know, even something sort of at the bottom of the pole. I bet he'd be very excited to finally get use his body. We are recalled to life for a purpose, for the good works that God has prepared for us, recalled to life to contrast with the corruption and death since the fall. Whether we feel like that's affected us or not, it has. And we await the final resolution of this life with Christ's return. But till then we carry this truth in our hearts and we do our best to live like it, to live like we've been resurrected. And really this is a call to move beyond not just not sinning, but to building life, to living a life of life, if that makes sense. So now in gospel application, just these questions. Have you received the resurrection that Jesus offers you? Do you have a friend to whom you can show Jesus? How would you articulate the hope that you have for them? Maybe not to their face necessarily, but how would you describe the healing that Jesus can bring to them? What will you do with your resurrected life? So now we're going to move into a time of communion. We're going to remember the work that Jesus did to bring us resurrection. Here at Hope, we don't ask that you're a member of this church or any church to participate. We just ask that you've bent the knee to King Jesus. We have gluten free option over here on my left, your right, but it's on both sides here. We take the bread to remember his body broken for us and take the juice to remember the blood shed for us. I'm going to pray to transition into this time. Worship team can come back up as I do so, so pray with me. God, we thank you for giving us new life in your son. He freely obeyed your will for our sake out of love for us and to your glory. We remember that work now with these symbols to remember his broken body and blood shed for us. If anyone here does not know your resurrection, awaken them to it. For those who do, remind us of this new life you've given us, help us to trust your grace and inspire us to bring life into the world around us. I thank you for this church. And I thank you for your work in our lives. Amen.