Let's open this morning's service
with hymn number 37 from your hardback hymnal. Number 37, How
Great Thou Art. Let's all stand together. Oh Lord my God, when I in awesome
wonder consider all the works thy hands have made. I see the stars, I hear the rolling
thunder, thy power throughout the universe displayed. Then sings my soul, my Savior
God, to Thee. How great Thou art! How great Thou art! Then sings my soul, my Savior
God, to Thee How great Thou art! How great Thou art! When through the woods and forest
glades I wander and hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees. When I look down from lofty mountain
brandure and hear the brook and feel the gentle breeze. Then sings my soul, my Savior
God, to Thee How great Thou art! How great Thou art! Then sings my soul, my Savior
God, to Thee How great Thou art! How great Thou art! And when I think that God, His
Son not sparing, Sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in. That on the cross, my burden
gladly bearing, He bled and died to take away my sin. Then sings my soul, my Savior
God, to Thee, How great Thou art! How great Thou art! Then sings my soul, my Savior
God, to Thee, How great Thou art! How great Thou art! When Christ shall come with shout
of acclamation and take me home, what joy shall fill my heart. Then I shall bow in humble adoration
and there proclaim, my God, how great thou art. Then sings my soul, my Saviour
God, to Thee How great Thou art! How great Thou art! Then sings my soul, my Saviour
God, to Thee How great Thou art! ♪ How great Thou art ♪ Please
be seated. Good morning. We're going to
be continuing our study of Mark this morning. If you'd like to
turn with me in your Bibles to Mark chapter one, or Mark chapter
two, Mark chapter two. 21 years ago today, Grace Gospel Church had its first
meeting at Petals. Some of you were there. You believe
it's been 21 years. We're just so very grateful that
the Lord has been pleased to keep us together. I was thinking
all the problems that we have, all the sin that we are guilty
of, and the Lord is faithful to keep us looking to Christ,
keep us faithful to His gospel. I'm so very thankful. I'm thankful
for you. Let's pray together. before we
begin. Our merciful Heavenly Father,
we come before Your throne of grace in the name of Thy dear
Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. We're thankful that all our righteousness
and all our acceptance and all the hope of our salvation is
to be found in Him. We're thankful for the ministry
of your Holy Spirit that opened the eyes of our understanding
and enabled us to believe on Christ. And we ask, Lord, for
those that remain strangers to your grace, that you would show
them that same mercy and that same grace. We pray that once
again this morning, you would enable us to have a fresh look,
a new hope, a more sure comfort in the Lord Jesus Christ and
in His finished work of redemption. We thank you for the ministry
of your word. We pray, Lord, that it would
be effectual. We pray that it would be powerful
and sharper than any two-edged sword, that you would divide
and heal and save, for we know that the gospel of your grace
is the message of this book. We pray that you would make it
clear to our hearts. We pray it in Christ's name.
Amen. In Mark chapter 2, We have again the story of a
man who is in dire need. This man is paralyzed, cannot
imagine what it would be like living in our world in such a
physical state and to live in that world would have been even
more difficult without the modern conveniences that we enjoy. That
was his state. He was completely paralyzed.
He had no feeling. He could not walk on his own. And he was in need of what only
the Lord could do for him. Now, that having been said, his
need was, unbeknownst to him, greater than was his paralysis. because when the Lord saw him
and saw the faith of he and his friends, the Lord said, thy sins
are forgiven thee. Thy sins are forgiven thee. That's
your greatest need. Now, I am fully aware that each
of us come to this place on Sunday mornings with a variety of needs.
There are people here that have Terminal illnesses that they
struggle with on a daily basis some of you have serious financial
issues some of you have relationship problems that are very very difficult
and And our prayer and hope is that the Lord would Minister
wisdom and grace and help in every one of those areas But I am convinced that however
difficult those issues are, they're not our greatest need. They're
not our greatest need. The greatest need that you have
and the greatest need that I have is to have our sins forgiven,
to be made right with God. How can that be? How can that
be? What did the Pharisees say to
this man? Who does he think he is? God alone can forgive sin. And our Lord responded to them
by saying that you might know that the Son of Man has power
to forgive sin. I say unto you stand and walk. And he stood and he walked. Now this is a This is a salvation
story. This is a message of hope for
every person who is paralyzed with sin. Every person who has
become dull in their senses toward God. That's what sin does. Sin
cools the heart. It dulls our senses. It numbs the mind. It confuses
the understanding so that we're not able to have a right understanding
of ourselves. We're not able to have a right
understanding of God. We're not able to have a right
understanding of the world. It's all the cause of sin. And our hope this morning, is
that our Lord be pleased to minister grace to our hearts and to say
to each one of us, thy sins are forgiven thee. If he does that,
we'll leave this place with great comfort and great hope, regardless
of what other areas he has seen fit in his wisdom to touch our
lives. And that whatever we're going
through, we know that it's the hand of God. It's the hand of
God. He hath done whatsoever he wills
with the armies of heaven and all the inhabitants of the earth.
And no man can stay his hand or say unto him, what doest thou?
Our God is absolutely sovereign. I mentioned this Wednesday night,
I'm grieved to hear the response that the religious experts give
when asked to explain these horrible events that take place in our
world. Every time there's a mass shooting
and the confusion and the heartbreak that we all feel for those people
who experience that. Inevitably, they go to the religious
leaders and they ask the religious leaders, And the question is
always the same. It's always the same. Here's
the question. How can an all-powerful, all-loving
God allow innocent people to suffer so? It's always the question. How can an all-powerful, all-loving
God allow innocent people to suffer so? And the religious
leaders always answer that question the same way. You see, there's
three assumptions in that question. The assumption number one is
that God's all powerful. Assumption number two is that
God's all loving and by that they mean that he loves everybody.
And the assumption number three is that men are innocent or at
least some people are innocent. Now only one of those presuppositions
are true. Only one of them is true. Number
two and number three aren't true. But the religious leaders They
will, you see that question can't be answered. It cannot be answered. It's an absolute impossibility
to answer that question because it's irrational. It's nonsensical. You can't make sense out of nonsense.
So one or more of those suppositions has to be changed in order to
give an answer to that question. And inevitably the religious
experts always change the first one. they always change the first
one you see to consider the fact that god doesn't love everybody
or to consider the fact that that that people are not innocent
is is too hard for them it doesn't fit the narrative it doesn't
fit their their religious persuasion and so what do they say they
say god has abdicated his throne and he has given to man's free
will Or he has, I listened to Franklin Graham this past week.
They asked him that same question. How can an all-powerful, all-loving
God allow such innocent people to suffer? And he didn't hesitate. He said, God didn't allow that.
He said, that was the devil. That was the devil that did that. What is he doing? You see, they
always deny the first assumption that God's all-powerful. That's the truth. Our God reigns
sovereign. He does whatsoever He wills.
He does it all for His glory. and all for the good of his people."
And that's true in those big events. Amos put it like this,
he said, has evil come to the city and the Lord has not done
it? You say, well, what kind of God
is that? It's a God who is God. That's what kind of God it is. and man wants God to be subservient
to him. 2 Thessalonians 2, man has set
himself up on the throne of God and he has no love for the truth
and therefore God has sent him a strong delusion that he should
believe the lie. The lie is that God loves everybody
Christ died for everybody. God wants everybody to be saved.
You've got to do what you need to do in order to make what God
wants to happen, happen. Isn't that the story? That's
the line. That's the line. Our God is sovereign. He's sovereign
in those big things and He's sovereign in every detail of
your life and my life, isn't He? And what does faith do? Faith just bows to him. Faith
says, Lord, whatever area of my life you've touched me, in your wise providence, I know
it is for the purpose of me to understand what my greater need
is. My greater need is to have my
sins forgiven. My greater need is to be made
right with God. And for that to happen, the Lord's
going to have to forgive me. The Lord's going to have to forgive
me. Look with me at this passage. Mark chapter 2, verse 1. And again, he entered into Capernaum. Now, you can look up that word,
Capernaum. Translated, it means a village of comfort. In our story, it's a picture
of the church. It's a picture of where we are
right now. Again, he entered into Capernaum,
a place of comfort, a place of great hope, a place of salvation. A place where God is pleased
to meet with his people, where he walks among the candlesticks,
as John saw it in Revelation. Where two or three are gathered
together, there I am in the midst of them, gathered in my name,
in my name. He does inhabit the praise of
his people. Again, he came to Capernaum, a village of comfort. Has the Lord ministered comfort
to your heart? Has he assured you that your
sins have been put away? Do you have access to the throne
of grace to find help and mercy in all of your needs? Can you
come into the presence of a holy God and know that you have acceptance? That's comfort. And when the
Lord told the prophet Isaiah, comfort ye, comfort ye my people,
speak ye comfortably unto Jerusalem, and tell them what? Their warfare
is accomplished. Tell them all their sin has been
put away. And then the prophet Isaiah said,
but Lord, where do I begin that message? And the Lord said, tell
them their grass. Tell them they're nothing but
sin. Tell them they have no righteousness. That way they'll find comfort
in knowing that they can't bring anything to the table of salvation. They don't have anything to bring.
And it'll make them completely dependent upon the one who has
accomplished the salvation of their souls all by himself. That's the Lord Jesus Christ,
isn't it? He is our salvation. He is our hope. And there's our
comfort. Oh, Lord, I can rest at a lady
come to the church this week here. She wanted to rent our
facilities on Saturday to have church. And I said as kindly
as I knew how that we didn't do that. She said, can I ask you why? And I looked at her and I said,
do you really want to know? And she said, yes, I do. So I
told her why. And come to find out, she was
Seventh-day Adventist and they were trying to start a new Seventh-day
Adventist church and she insisted that they were They were keeping
holy the Sabbath by meeting on Saturday. I had an opportunity
to tell her about Hebrews chapter four and tell her about Christ
and who the Sabbath is. But that was her comfort, her
rest. She just kept saying, oh, we
just enjoy resting on Saturday. And I said, well, we rest every
day. We rest every day. Christ is
our Sabbath. He never leaves us. He never
forsakes us. He's always there. We rest in
Him all the time. A village of comfort. That's
where the Lord came to. He entered again into Capernaum. And wouldn't you love for this
next statement to be said about our church? Well, this is my prayer. And
after some days, it was noised that he was in the house. Oh, the Lord's here. Might God give us opportunity
and grace to noise it around. to let folks know. I'm sure that
there were people saying, you remember in chapter 1 the Lord
had to depart into the wilderness because he was being thronged
by the people and separate himself from them and now he's come back.
And in Matthew chapter 8 it tells us where he went during that
time. He went over the Sea of Gennesaret to the Gadarenes and
healed that demoniac that was in the Gadarenes. And now he's
come back to Capernaum. a little seaside village on the
Sea of Galilee and there were people saying, well I saw him
over there, I saw him over there and people running here and there
looking for the Lord. Nothing's changed. You know what
they say? The lady I talked to this week,
well he meets with us on Saturday and they'll tell you, no he's
over here, no he's over there. Might it be noised by us that
he's in the house, that God is here, and that he's here to meet
with sinners. He's here to put away their sin,
to give them hope, to give them salvation, to shine the light
of the gospel in the face of the Lord Jesus Christ in their
hearts. Might that be our testimony?
And if it is, well, we'll see. Look what he says. In verse 2,
and straightway many were gathered together in so much that there
was no room to receive them, no, not so much as about the
door and he preached the word unto them. He didn't waste their
time with anything else. And we don't do that here, do
we? We, people ask, well, what do y'all do? Well, we sing some
hymns, we offer prayer, and we open God's word, and we break
the bread of life, and we preach the gospel. We preach Christ. You say, what do you have for
our children? We have something for your children that you can't
get anywhere else, anywhere else. We're not here to entertain your
children. We're here to give them the same thing we're here
to give you. The Lord Jesus Christ, he's in the house. This is a
village of comfort. This is where he's pleased to
speak to his people, make himself known. And he does it through
the preaching of the gospel. So we don't waste our time with
anything else. We'll just open the book and
ask God, oh Lord, speak. And our hope is that he will
do for us what he did for those disciples in Luke chapter 24
on the road to Emmaus. You remember, they were walking
with him and they didn't even know it was the Lord until the
breaking of bread. And in the breaking of bread,
the scripture says their eyes were opened and they knew him. And they said, did not our hearts
burn within us as He spake with us along the way? We didn't know
it was Him, but we knew something was happening. And then He was
pleased in the breaking of bread. What God opens, no man can shut.
Lord, open Your Word. Open my heart. Open the windows
of heaven. Pour out the blessing of Your
grace on my soul. That's my greatest need. If I've
got that, I've got everything. If God be for me, who could be
against me." So he's in the house, the word
is out that he's there in Capernaum and the people come and once
again they throng the house to listen to what he has to say. In verse 3, and they come unto
him bringing one sick of the palsy which was Born of four. Now, this is a description of many different
physical maladies. We might call it cerebral palsy. We might call it multiple sclerosis. We might call it Parkinson's
disease that we have much better understanding as to what some
of the details of these diseases are now. But it was a disease
of the nervous system caused the muscles to atrophy and you
lose your feeling and you become paralyzed. So here's the state
that this man's in. Again, it's a physical, it's
a spiritual picture, isn't it? You see, our hearts as a result
of sin have atrophied. feelings for the things of God
are not as they ought to be. I like what I heard one brother
say, he said, the thing that bothers me so much about my sin
is how little it bothers me. Isn't that true? We've got palsy, spiritual palsy. And we need the Lord to preach
the gospel to us. We're not here to prove the Bible
to be true. We're not here to offer up propositions out of the scriptures
to rub like a rabbit's foot and give you some relief in some
particular area of your life. People do that all the time.
quote a verse of scripture thinking well that's going to help me
here and it's going to help me there. The Lord didn't do that. He didn't
try to prove the Bible. He preached the gospel. He didn't
try to apply principles. He didn't try to educate people
so that they could have more understanding of good doctrine
and theology. He preached to them. Preaching
is just simply saying, thus saith the Lord. That's what preaching
is. You're not interested in my opinion and I'm not interested
in yours. Isn't that true? We've all got
an opinion, so what? What's it worth? Nothing. Oh, but if you can tell me what
God says, then I know the truth. Just tell me what God says. I'm
not here to evaluate it. I just want to know what he says.
Well, here's what he's saying. He's preaching the gospel, and
there's a man who is paralyzed, and he's got four friends, and
they can't get to the Lord through the crowd, and so they climb
up on the roof of the house, and they move some tiles off
of the roof, and they lower the man down right in front of the
Lord. And when, verse four, they could
not come nigh unto him for the press, they uncovered the roof
where he was, and when they had broken it up, they let down the
bed wherein the sick of the palsy lay. You know, there's two kinds of
people in this story. And there's two kinds of people
in your life and in my life. There's a group of people here
that's large and they are hindering this man from being able to get
to the Lord. And then there's a much smaller
group of people who are helping him to get to the Lord. And nothing's changed. Nothing's
changed. There's going to be people in
your life that are going to do everything they can do to hinder
you from getting to the Lord. Don't flatter yourself, young
people, in thinking that all those people on your Facebook
are your friends. And don't flatter yourself in
thinking that when they like you, that they really do like
you. How many of those people would
be like these four men, doing everything they can to help you?
You see, believers are your only friends. Believers are your only friends.
And I know when God has ministered grace to someone's heart, when
they become burdened for other people's souls. I get so encouraged
when I hear somebody say, with tears in their eyes, My children
don't know the Lord. My mother, my father, my husband,
my wife. And they become burdened. You
see, the burden that you have for others is only a reflection
of the burden that you have for yourself. And people who are
dull to their own needs are dull to everybody else's needs. The
most of the people in this world aren't your friends. Not truly. Not truly. A friend is one who
will do everything necessary to help you get to Christ. They'll
pray for you. They'll climb up on the top of
the building. They'll move tiles off the roof to get you down
to the Lord. They'll do whatever they can do because they understand,
because of their own experience, that that is your greatest need. I've seen it over the years. I've seen men stand in the way
of their wives coming to Christ. I've seen wives stand in the
way of their husbands coming to Christ. I've seen parents
try to get in the way of their children to come to Christ. And it always scares me because
if that person wanting to come is the Lord's, that person standing
in the way is going to be in trouble. God's not going to let
them. Stay in the way. He'll do whatever
he has to do to remove them. The Lord said in Luke chapter
14, if any man come after me and hate not his father and his
mother and his wife and his children and his brethren and his sisters
and his own life also, he cannot be a committed disciple. Is that
what it says? I changed it, didn't I? He didn't
say he cannot be a committed disciple. He said he cannot be
my disciple. He cannot be my disciple. Now
the Lord's not talking about hating folks. He made it clear
that we're to love our enemies, isn't he? Do good unto those
that despitefully use you. But he's saying that if you allow
somebody else to hinder you from coming to Christ, and you're more interested in
pleasing them than you are in the salvation of your own soul.
You see, there's two kinds of people in this world. There are
those that will hinder you and those that will help you. And
you will only find believers helping you. The unbeliever will
always be a hindrance to you. And if you allow them to hinder
you, then that's what the Lord will say. If any man come after me and
not love me more than them, he cannot be my disciple. And every child of God knows that the most dear and precious relationships
that they have in their lives in this world will be forsaken before they
will forsake Christ. You will, won't you? Won't you? Why do people hinder us? Why
do men want to hinder someone else? Well, just think about
this crowd. Why could not this man with palsy
get to Christ? Because they didn't want him
to have something they didn't have. You see, they were trying
to get to Christ, and they didn't want him to be able to get in
their way. People don't, here's the point
of that illustration, I know it's a little confusing, but
the point of it is that people don't want you to have what they
don't have. They don't know God. And they're intimidated, and
convicted, confused, and they don't want somebody else to have
something they don't have. Men love the praise of men more
than the praise of God. First Corinthians chapter, Romans,
I'm sorry, chapter 13. I tried to quote this verse last
week, I think, and I missed the passage that it was in. But the
passage says, evil communication corrupts good morals. in the southern vernacular, you
sleep with the dogs, you're gonna get fleas, right? I mean, you're
just, you know, you're just, you're gonna become like the
people. There are friends, real friends, not Facebook friends,
real friends, that want you to come to Christ. and they will do whatever they
have to do to help you. And then there are those, the
masses, who will hinder you. Job had some friends, didn't
he? Bildad, Eliphaz, and Zophar. Bildad's name translated means
confusing love. Eliphaz's name translated is,
my God, is gold. And Zophar's name translated
is sparrow, just a little hopping bird that can't ever sit still. They weren't friends, were they?
Job called them miserable comforters. You're not giving me comfort?
You're not taking me to Capernaum where the Lord is in the house?
All you're doing is confusing me. You're taking away any hope
that I have. And it wasn't until Eliphaz came
on the scene and preached the gospel to Job. And Eliphaz said
some hard things to Job, but friends will do that, won't they? A friend loveth at all times.
and a brother is born for adversity. Faithful, faithful, faithful
are the wounds of a friend." Oh Lord, give me friends, real
friends. Friends that will help me get
to Christ. And what they do, they uncover
the roof So what is it that separates,
physically speaking, what is it that separates you right now
from heaven? It's that roof right there, isn't it? We're going to see in the next
hour from Isaiah chapter 59 that God's hand is not short that
it cannot save, neither is His ear heavy that it cannot hear,
but your sins have separated you from your God. See, we need somebody to remove
that barrier. between us and God so that we can be let down and
brought in to His presence. We need someone to tell us about
the Savior, the one who successfully satisfied the demands of God's
justice and bore the sins of His people in His body upon that
tree and put them away once and for all. We need someone to tell
us about Christ, don't we? That's what a real friend does.
That's what a real friend does. Removes the tiles from the roof.
Gives us access to the Savior. And what the Lord says is, what
you uncover, I will cover. And what you try to cover, I'll
uncover. Lord, uncover my sin. That's my problem. My problem
is a sin problem. That's why the Lord said, if
you confess your sins, He is faithful and just to forgive
you of your sins and cleanse you of all of your unrighteousness.
Now that just simply means to stand in the presence of a holy
God and confess yourself to be a sinner. Agree with God that
everything about you is sinful. That's what we are, isn't it? The woman at the well, she couldn't
drink of the water of life until the Lord confronted her in her
sin, didn't he? If you knew who it is that saith
unto thee, give me to drink, you'd ask of him and he'd give
you living water. Go get your husband. Oh, the Lord had mercy on her,
didn't he? Come meet a man who told me everything I ever did. You see the problem that we have
is being made sinners and that's a work of grace that only God
can do. Only God can do it. Oh, there's so much more to this
story and we need to take a break. Maybe we'll just come back to
it. All right, let's do that. Let's take a break.