Let's be turning to Luke chapter
5. Luke chapter 5. We're going to
begin in verse 17 with how it starts. It says, And it came
to pass on a certain day as he was teaching. Now, the Spirit
highlights for us here that this is a certain day. And it suggests that Christ taught
the people daily. He taught the people daily. But
here was a certain day, a particular day where God purposed to be
gracious to a sinner. God purposed to be gracious to
a sinner on this day. And you think about that. What
a day to be present. What a day to be present, on
a certain day to see and to experience the grace of God, to hear Him
teach, to be touched by the grace and power of Almighty God. Now it says, we'll read all of
verse 17, And it came to pass on a certain day, as He was teaching,
that there were Pharisees and doctors of the law sitting by. which were come out of every
town of Galilee, and Judea, and Jerusalem, and the power of the
Lord was present to heal them." Christ was teaching. Enemies
of the Gospel were present, and the power of the Lord to heal
was present. And soon we'll find that there's
a man who's brought into this picture, a man sick with the
palsy. And what we see here is that
there's a confrontation setting up. There's a confrontation setting
up here. Now, before we look at some of
the finer details of what our Lord is showing us here, what
he's teaching us, I want us to put ourselves here, that what
we're reading of here is an outline of when the Lord brings his gospel
to us, how he confronts us. We're pictured here. This whole
outline is a picture of how the Lord confronts us with the gospel. Now we're sinners, dead in trespasses
and sins, and he brings his word with power to heal us, to save
us, to conquer our hearts, and to heal us sick with the palsy. And so we're recognizing ourselves
here and our need of his grace and mercy here. You see, God
has a purpose in saving his people. on a certain day when he will
be gracious to his child. He has a purpose in saving his
people and he does this It certainly feels like, to us, he does this
more often than not. He does this not just on one
day, but there are days in which he visits us with power and heals
us, when he teaches us, when he knocks over the philosophies
of our mind, the worldly, vain, fleshly philosophies of our mind. And he visits us to heal us,
just as we know that We are saved, we are being saved, and we shall
be saved. Our Lord does this for his people
whom he loves. He does this for you, and I'm
thankful for his healing of you, and I'm thankful for his healing
and power for me. I'm thankful for his grace. Just as we read, we know that
all things work together for good to them that love God, to
them who are thee called according to purpose, the purpose of God. God has a purpose to save you
that hear Christ, that see the Son of God and believe the Son
of God. Now, in that day of grace, When
the Lord visits you, the voice of Christ shall be present on
that day. He'll be declaring the gospel.
He'll be declaring the gospel to you. He'll be teaching you.
Christ will be teaching you on that certain day. And there will
be Pharisees and doctors of the law sitting by. which were come
out of every town of Galilee and Judea and Jerusalem. And to put it bluntly, when we
read that, what I'm saying is, that's a picture of what's inside
of every one of us. those Pharisees, those doctors
of the law who know something, who know something. This is speaking
of us. It describes me. It describes
you, brethren, these Pharisees and these doctors. It describes
the opinions that we have, the fleshly lusts and desires that
we have. It has the philosophies of man
spoken of here. And these are sitting by, ready
to listen, listening, ready to pounce. What's he going to say
here? That's contrary to what I think. That's blasphemous.
He shouldn't say that. And we're ready. We're ready
to come and oppose the teaching of Christ by nature. And we've
picked these things up from all manner of places. We pick it
up in religion. We pick it up from the world.
We pick it up from just opinions that we've garnered and gathered
over the years. These are the philosophies of
man, whether they be from, as it says, Galilee, Judea, or Jerusalem. We pick these things up and carry
them with us, and we're ready to pounce on what the Lord teaches
us. Yet, according to the purpose
of God, When he purposes to save his people, the power of the
Lord is present to heal them, to heal them, to heal them. And
so when the Lord purposes to do it, he will take the words,
the teachings of Christ, and make it effectual in the hearts
of his people. He will triumph and overcome
those ideas that we have as as Pharisees and doctors and
scribes of the law who think they know something when we know
nothing. And then we see the purpose of
God to save this sinner, to save his people, meaning he'll confront
the idolatry of our heart and mind. And he'll find, he'll get
to that man sick with the palsy. He'll get to what we are. He'll come and find us. We are
sick, weak, and feeble. men and women with the palsy
and cannot save ourselves. And that's what he's doing here.
And so Christ will find the lost sinner. He'll find them who are
ruined and humbled and broken and brought down to nothing in
themselves because he's made them so because it's a certain
day of his grace. A certain day of His grace. And
our Lord will do that. He'll silence the critics. He'll
silence the voices in our hearts and minds that rise up against
the knowledge of the truth. and He'll heal us of the plague
of our sin and death. And so, as we're going through
this passage here in Luke 5, in Luke 5, verse 17 through 26,
we see here that, what I want us to see here is that Christ
cannot fail to save whom He will save. All that were given to
Him of the Father. according as He hath chosen us
in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should
be holy and without blame before Him in love. All for whom Christ
laid down His life on the cross, whom He redeemed with His own
blood, They've been forgiven in Christ. They've received the
forgiveness of their sins in Christ. And therefore, He's going
to save His people from the pollution and the corruption of sin. That we are in Adam by nature. He's going to seek out the lost
sinner, and he's going to save them graciously and powerfully
from that grip of death in the body of sin. Our Lord cannot
fail. I was thinking of this from 2
Corinthians 10 5, which says, casting down imaginations. This is what our Lord does by
the gospel, made effectual to us, casting down imaginations,
and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge
of God. and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience
of Christ. Now, with that understanding,
this is me. This is the Lord confronting
me and my sinful nature. And he's overcoming and conquering,
knocking down the idolatry of my heart and mind and finding
me, that broken, sick, vile creature, a man taken with the palsy, and
He heals me by His grace. That's the picture there. Now,
with that eye that this is for my salvation, this is because
I need this, I need this deliverance, I need this healing, let's look
now at these details. Let's pick up in Luke 5 verse
18. And behold, men brought in a
bed a man which was taken with a palsy. And they sought means
to bring him in and to lay him before Christ. Now, this man
who's taken into bed with a palsy, he's now so weak that a palsy,
as I understand it, it's a deterioration of the nerves so that you're
just, you're weak, and he can't carry himself, he can't lift
himself up, he can't bring himself to Christ, and it's a good way
to describe us in Adam. We are taken in a palsy. We can't save ourselves, we can't
bring ourselves to God, we don't even know who the true and living
God is, and we have no desire to bring ourselves there. But
we see in this man our sin condition. We find ourselves helpless like
this man. When the Lord's gracious to us,
he'll make us to know I'm the sick, helpless sinner. I'm the
sick one. I'm the one who's diseased. This
man describes me and my condition. That's what he says to his child.
That's what he teaches his child. And then the other thing we see
here is our Lord does use means to bring his people to him. He does use means. He doesn't
have to, but it pleases him to use means in this world to bring
the knowledge of this glorious salvation of what Christ has
done for us. One of the means here that we
see is that this man is in a bed, taken with a palsy. The Lord had manifest a sickness
in this man. The Lord revealed a disease. He put a disease there. He made
this man to know his sickness. He humbled this man. He brought
this man low. This man was taken with a palsy. This man was struck with that
to humble him. and to show him what he is by
nature, to make him helpless in himself. And that's what he
does. He makes us to know that we are
helpless. But by nature, we don't know
that. We might have a head knowledge of our weakness. We might have
a head knowledge that I'm unable to save myself. But we don't
really believe it until the Lord makes us to know it. He's going
to make us to know it. Because we don't know it. We
don't know anything, as we ought to know, until the Lord gives
it to us. Just as we see this man taken
with a palsy, he doesn't bring himself, we don't bring ourselves. And we don't even have a desire,
the scriptures say, to bring ourselves to the Lord. That's
what we read in Romans 3, verse 10 and 11. As it is written,
there's none righteous, no, not one. We might sit there as Pharisees
and doctors of the law, but we're not righteous. We might think
we're righteous, but we're not. We're not righteous or just.
There's none that understandeth. There's none that seeketh after
God. And so if you find yourself saying,
well, wait a minute, I sought the Lord when I was a young man,
or I seek the Lord now. No, you don't. Not except God
be gracious to you. We don't seek after the Lord.
If the Lord stirs us up and we seek him, it's because he's gracious
to us. We acknowledge God and give him
the thanks and the praise for what he's done for us. But he
will use means to bring us to the Lord. And so when we come,
It's a certain day, a day in which God has purposed to be
gracious to us, and we come like this man, taken with the palsy,
on a bed, unable to help ourselves, unable to bring ourselves or
help ourselves. And so we see this man's sickness
here is a means that God used to bring him to Christ, to bring
him into the presence of Christ. Otherwise, this man wouldn't
have been there. This man didn't need Christ otherwise. But now
he did. This is the means that the Lord
used for that man to bring him into his presence. And God may
actually use an actual disease or sickness to humble us, to
bring us low in ourselves, to touch us. He does that. And some
things seen and known, and a lot of things not seen and not known
to others, but we know the Lord has done this. The Lord brought
me low for my good. He brought me low for my good
to teach me, to show me my need of Him and that we might know
the grace and salvation of God. Here in this passage we also
see that the Lord uses other means. He used this man's friends
to bring him into the presence of Christ. And we're not told
whether this man asked to be brought here or if his friends
just made an executive decision, heard of Christ, picked him up,
and brought him there. I tend to believe it's the latter.
This man maybe didn't even know what was going on. He may have
heard them say some things, but he was so destroyed, so broken,
so weak, taken with that palsy, just laying there on that bed,
trembling and shaking and unable to move voluntarily or to bring
himself there. But they heard Christ was near,
and they picked up their friend, and they brought him there. They
brought him there. And so when this man came into
the presence of the Lord, and Christ said to him, man, thy
sins are forgiven thee, in verse 20, when he said that, thy sins
are forgiven thee, we don't hear of this man complaining. He doesn't
say, wait a minute, I'm here for another reason. I want to
be healed. He doesn't say that. He doesn't
protest this at all. The Lord said, your sins are
forgiven you. And that speaks to our great
need. We do. We do have weaknesses
and faults. We have sins. We have sicknesses
and diseases and ways in which we are touched by the Lord, whether
seen or unseen. When the Lord draws near and
says, your sins are forgiven in Christ, when He heals us of
that plague of sin, that gives us great comfort. That gives
the child of God great comfort and peace when the Lord speaks
that into the heart. And if that is all that the Lord
had said and that man went home on that bed, it would have been
good thing because that sickness then would have been in mercy
that sickness then would would have continued and God would
have been merciful to that man and kind to that man and provided
for that man just as he does for every one of us with our
infirmities that he's not taken away in this flesh he uses that
that thorn in the flesh is still made useful to us because God
shows us that in when I'm weak Then I'm strong, Paul said. And
so that's why there are things that the Lord doesn't take, because
it stops us and reminds us the Lord is my Lord and my God. What am I thinking? What am I
doing? He does it. He uses our weaknesses
and continues them for our good. So this man was healed of his
sins, forgiven of his sins. And really, that's what's needed
because our sicknesses, our diseases, our faults, all our sin are a
symptom of sin and death in the world, of what we are an atom,
of the corruption that we are in Adam. And so all our troubles,
all our sorrows, our sicknesses, our trials, our difficulties,
our hardships, they're just a symptom of the plague of sin that's in
us. But so few ever hear it or stop
or consider how that the Lord is showing us our need of His
grace and mercy. And we'll just go on in that
death and die in our sins except God be gracious on a certain
day. when he purposes to bring his
word with power to your heart and to heal you on that day. So our Lord uses means for the
good and salvation of his people. Sometimes it is sickness. Sometimes
it's getting fired from a job. Sometimes it's being put in your
place by another who maybe you don't think should put you in
that place, but they do. The Lord can touch us in so many
ways for the good of his people. Sometimes he uses friends and
family who love you and pray for you and bring you to hear
the gospel and encourage you in the things that you're hearing.
Even the assembly of his sheep being gathered together consistently
is a means by which God is gracious to his people and calls them
to himself to come and hear the word where Christ is teaching. And we come with our oppositions
in our mind, just like having Pharisees and doctors of the
law in our own minds thinking we know something. And the Spirit
of the Lord is present that day to heal us. And he does it all
wonderfully by his grace. So this passage not only describes
these means, but it even gives us a sense of the difficulty,
the impossibility of our salvation, if not for the grace of God.
And we see that in verse 19, Luke 5, 19. And when they could
not find by what way they might bring him in because of the multitude,
they went upon the housetop and let him down through the tiling
with his couch into the midst before Jesus. And so this gives
us a sense of the effort that went into the means, in a sense,
of bringing this man to be healed by Christ. We get a sense of
the difficulty and the opposition to our hearing the gospel. And it's true. For us, it's like
a camel passing through the eye of a needle. It's impossible.
It can't be done. But with God, all things are
possible. And so they had decided that
day, or whenever they set out, to pick up their friend on his
couch, which is not like a love seat. It's more of just a pallet,
like a pillow or a blanket. And they brought him on that
which he lay. They brought him on that. They
carried him there. And that was an effort right
there. And then they arrive, and there's
a multitude of people. inside and outside the house
trying to get a view and they're not giving up their spot. They're
not backing away to let you in. They want to hear Christ. And
they're out the front door. There probably wasn't a back
door, but if there was it would have been out the back door.
Any window that was there had somebody sitting in it and people
sitting on the sides listening in and trying to look in themselves.
And so they had to go up on a roof, meaning they had to now hoist
their friend up on top of the roof. And I looked at it. I used
to think maybe they were just ripping open the tile, and maybe
they were. But at those times, those houses had a hole in the
roof, and they could put up a ladder. But it sounds like that ladder
wasn't there. And so they had to hoist up their friend and
then let him down. into that room before Christ. And there was great effort expended
in doing that. And it just shows us the effort
that the Lord even puts. Again, it could be in a snap
of a finger, but the Lord, He brings us into that fellowship
with Him where we labor and pray and are hurt and disappointed
and frustrated and think it should have gone this way and it goes
that way. And it all is used even for our good as means in
it to teach us and to show us, Lord, I need you. And we're humbled
even in it as means in that sense. And our Lord tells us, the kingdom
of heaven suffereth violence and the violent taketh it by
force. And so he engages his people
in that way. And so our Lord is teaching each
of us, don't give up. Don't cease to pray. Keep praying. Keep spreading the gospel. Keep
sharing it. And speaking, I think Ephesians
talks of that grace. of which we've been taught, and
that's the grace that we show to others. That is, as the Lord
has taught us, and being kind and gracious to us, that informs
how we speak to others, and how we encourage others in the truth.
And the Lord doesn't always hit us over the head. In fact, a
lot of times it's through a still, quiet voice. And that's how we
speak to others and deal with others at times as well, graciously,
according to the grace that we've been shown by our Lord and Savior. And so he's teaching us, don't
give up, pray, spread the gospel, speak to others, encourage others,
help others as you're able, because on a certain day, on a certain
day like this day, when the Lord is present to heal them, He'll
do just that. He'll bring them there and heal
his people. Now verse 20 says, and when he saw their faith,
he said unto them, man, thy sins are forgiven thee. I like this. Our Lord acknowledges their faith. And I believe what our Lord is
doing is he's drawing our attention to the manifest work of God. When we see what the Lord is
doing, it was clear when he saw what these men were doing, he's
making us to see that's the manifestation of God's power there, who's brought
them here and caused them to carry their friend here and to
bring him down in my presence. And so it's just a testimony. It's not their faith, but rather
the faith which God gave them was manifest, that the Lord was
in this. The Lord was doing this. This
is how Luke knew that the Spirit of the Lord was present that
day to heal them. Look at what's going on. This is massive, what's
going on here. There's a confrontation going
on here. And the gospel is going forth. saving his people from
their sins. Now, the Pharisees, they didn't
like what Christ said. They weren't too pleased with
what our Lord said when he said, man, thy sins are forgiven thee. But that's what this man needed
most. He needed his sins forgiven. That's profitable. That's profitable. You think about, had the Lord
just physically healed this man, This man would have just gone
right back to his wicked ways. His feet would have hit the ground
and he would have been right off doing what he used to do.
It wouldn't have taken long at all before he went right back
to his wicked ways in the world and in this flesh. And what it
shows us is that at the root of all our suffering now is sin. But the Lord forgave this man
of his sin. He healed this man of that sin disease and turned
him from his ways and his walk to the Lord. And notice also
how the power and grace of God is not only manifest in his people. This man was touched by the Lord.
This man was healed by the Lord. But in that same moment, there
were others there who despised it. to whom it was death. So it was life, a saver of life
to some, and a saver of death unto others. Look at verse 21.
And the scribes and the Pharisees began to reason, saying, who
is this which speaketh blasphemies? That was their judgment. This
man's a blasphemer. But they actually were right
in their next thing, in what they said. Who can forgive sins
but God alone? And because they judged him,
to not be God and not be the Christ, they didn't even see
or understand what they were saying. They didn't see and recognize
this man is God. We're in the presence of God.
robed in flesh like unto us. And we see there that this is
a difference which the Lord makes. This is why it is to some this
gospel is a saver of life and to others it's a saver of death
unto death. Because it's of the grace and power of God that saves
whom He will. And that calls whom He will to
hear this grace and salvation of our Lord. Even so then, at
this present time also, there is a remnant according to the
election of grace. And so we see just here, in the
healing of this man with a palsy and the opposition of the Pharisees,
we see here how that the Lord is gracious to whom he will be
gracious. And except he be gracious, none
are saved. None are saved. So then it's not of him that
willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy. And then finally, we see that
our God alone has the power and the authority to heal us of the
plague of sin and to heal our infirmities. Look at verse 23.
He asks, he knows they don't like this, and he asks, whether
it's easier to say, thy sins be forgiven thee, or to say,
rise up and walk. And what he's saying there, if
you think about it, it's impossible for any man by his word to have
that kind of authority to forgive a man his sins or to heal a man
with his word alone. It's impossible for any man to
do that. I used to try to think, well,
yeah, what is harder to say? Well, Christ not only bore the
sin of his people and put it away, but he bore our infirmities
and our sicknesses. He bore the whole thing and put
it away. So it's not saying which one's
Harder or easier, what he's saying is it's impossible for a man
to do this. You're right. God only can do
this. God is the one who does both
of these things. God's able to do them. And so
our Lord demonstrated that in the next verse, 24, but that
ye may know that the Son of Man hath power upon earth to forgive
sins. He said unto the sick of the
palsy, I say unto thee, arise and take up thy couch and go
into thine house. And so the Lord's shown us that
this Jesus of Nazareth is the very Christ of God. He is the
Son of God. He is God manifest in the flesh. And He, and He alone, is able
to save us of our sins, to forgive us of our sins, and to heal us
of our infirmities. He does this to the salvation
of our souls through His death on the cross and He manifests
it in us by His Spirit. And verse 26 says, And they were
all amazed, and they glorified God and were filled with fear,
saying, We have seen strange things today. And what that means
is the Lord has been contrary to our opinion. He has opposed
what we think and what we thought and being gracious to us to save
us. And that's what he does. Whenever
the Lord saves his people graciously by Christ, it is contrary to
everything we are in this flesh and everything we think and everything
we do to save ourselves. It's contrary to us. And he's gracious to us to the
praise and glory and honor of his name. Amen.