So again a warm welcome to all of you to the worship of our great God. Not a warm welcome to this hall, but to worship together whenever you might be. Now I’m going to pray first, and then I’ll read our text, and then we shall look at the text. Now this morning as I pray, we want to in particular remember our brother Aaron. He’s actually supposed to be up here leading in worship this morning. But for those who are unaware, he is down with dengue, now hospitalised in the hospital, receiving medical attention. So let us bow our head to pray for him and also his family. Let us pray.

“Our dear Father in heaven, we again want to bow before You and we are mindful, O Lord, that we are coming before the great and almighty God, who deserves our worship and honour, who deserves all glory, for to You belong power and honour and glory. And we pray, Lord, that You’ll also help us to see that we are just minut, insignificant beings coming before such a great God. And we pray that You’ll help us to have a sense of that privilege and blessing of coming together as Your people, coming before the throne of grace. 

And Lord we do now pray that You’ll bless our time together. And though we are gathered in different places, we know that You are near to us. And we pray that indeed, we will be drawn closer to You this day as we come and as we hear Your truth. We pray that You’ll be pleased to enlighten our minds and grant us understanding, that You would be pleased to humble our hearts and soften our hearts, O Lord, that our hearts may not remain stubborn and hard towards Your instructions and Your truth.

Help us to know that we are a people who are still vulnerable to fall away, that daily in our lives it’s so easy for us to forget You and neglect our duties, and so easy for us to sin against You. And we know that daily indeed we have, for indeed we have not loved You as we ought, and we have not served You as we ought. And so we pray that once again for Your forgiveness of our sins. 

We come together also at this time to remember our brother Aaron, and we commit him unto Your loving care especially at this time, him as he is receiving medical treatment and attention at the hospital. We pray, O Lord, that You might grant him recovery, strengthen his body O Lord to fight the virus. Lord, we pray for his family too, for Ern Huey and the children, we pray that You will grant them special protection at this time, grant them the strength needed for Grace to be able to manage the family and responsibilities. 

And Lord, we also pray for ourselves as a church. Help us to remember that it is indeed by Your grace and mercy that You have preserved us till this day, for we live in a time where we see daily people are dying. So Lord we come together this morning, and we look to You for mercy. For mercy, because we know that we are in a midst of a pandemic, for mercy because people are under some degree of lockdown everywhere in this world, mercy because we are unable to go out to work or to school or to play or to the mall or to eat.

Lord, we know that we have been so restricted in the confine of our own homes. And we pray, O Lord, that You might indeed show mercy, mercy also because there are so many people who are suffering in so many ways. So many have lost their jobs, and many indeed are in distress and in depression. Lord, we pray for Your mercy that You would indeed quickly and lift us out of this pandemic and remove the virus from our midst and that as a church we might be able to gather physically again, gather in-person to meet one another whom we so long to see.

So, Lord, we look to You, and we pray that You’ll look down upon us with pity and with kindness. And Lord, we know that we can only look to You for help, for there is no help in this world. And now as we come to this time of the study of Your Word, we again pray that You’ll bless this moment that we open up Your Word, You’ll bless our time together. For this, we pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.”

Alright, I’ll like to continue to look at the miracles of the Lord Jesus Christ. And this morning, I draw your attention to the Gospel of Luke chapter 5. The Gospel of Luke and chapter 5, and our text this morning is in verses 17 through 26. Verses 17 through 26. So let me first read the text.

Now, this is the Word of God in verse 17. “Now it happened on a certain day, as He was teaching, that there were Pharisees and teachers of the law sitting by, who had come out of every town of Galilee, Judea, and Jerusalem. And the power of the Lord was present to heal them. Then behold, men brought on a bed a man who was paralyzed, whom they sought to bring in and lay before Him. And when they could not find how they might bring him in, because of the crowd, they went up on the housetop and let him down with his bed through the tiling into the midst before Jesus. When He saw their faith, He said to him, “Man, your sins are forgiven you.”

And the scribes and the Pharisees began to reason, saying, “Who is this who speaks blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God alone?” But when Jesus perceived their thoughts, He answered and said to them, “Why are you reasoning in your hearts? Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven you,’ or to say, ‘Rise up and walk’? But that you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins”—He said to the man who was paralyzed, “I say to you, arise, take up your bed, and go to your house.” Immediately he arose before them, took up what he had been lying on, and departed to his own house, glorifying God. And they were all amazed, and they glorified God and were filled with fear, saying, “We have seen strange things (or unusual things) today!”.”

Alright, this is a miracle of the Lord Jesus Christ, we call “The Healing of the Paralytic”. Now you can see that this miracle is one of the most dramatic alright, this scene is one of the most dramatic in the Bible. You can see that there are a lot of people who are involved in this incident. You have, of course, Jesus. You have the Pharisees and the scribes there. You have the crowd, you have the four men alright, and you have the paralytic.

But we also see you know a lot of the activities alright here in this account cause we see the crowd there you know, the people who are trying to see Jesus. And then you see these four men alright trying their best to bring their friend on the mat as it were, on the bed alright, and to bring him to Jesus. But unable to get through the crowd, you see them climbing up to the rooftop you know, taking the tiles off the roof, and then lowering down that bed where the man was on, down in front of Jesus. And that must have been a very dramatic scene. 

Now in the midst of all this drama, now we must not miss the point alright, we must not miss the teaching of this passage. As I say, that is what we should always try to do as we come and look at the miracles of the Lord Jesus Christ to see what Jesus is teaching here. Now as I say, the miracles of the Lord Jesus Christ, they are meant to teach us about salvation. They are meant to point us to the saving work or the saving missions of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Miracles, in other words, are not mainly or primarily about the individual benefit of the person. It’s meant to be a picture or an illustration of the saving work of our Lord Jesus Christ. And so then that begs the question: So what is the lesson? What is the point of this miracle? Now I think we can kind of see the point. If you see that there is a word alright that’s being repeated here in this passage here, and that word is ‘forgive’.

Look for example with me at verse 20: “When He saw their faith, He said to him, “Man, your sins are forgiven.””. And then in verse 21, the people asked: “Who can forgive sins but God alone?”. And then in verse 23, we read Jesus saying: “Your sins are forgiven you”. And then in verse 24: So “that you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins”. Now can you see the repetition of the word ‘forgive’ / ‘forgiven’? Now I would therefore submit to you that that is the point of this parable. The point of the parable is to teach us about forgiveness. That’s the reason why I have entitled this morning’s sermon as “Forgiving the Paralytic” instead of healing because it is about forgiveness. 

And so as we study these miracles, I would like you to understand, just to grasp alright, to grasp three truths about forgiveness here alright- three truths about forgiveness here. Now, what are they? Now number one, now the first thing is that to realize that our greatest need is to be forgiven of our sin. Our greatest need is to be forgiven of our sins. Now I want you to, first of all, take a look at this man here, this man who is paralyzed. Now think about his trouble. Think about his problem here now as a man who could not walk.

Now you see, that is the first thing Luke wants us to understand, to see about this person in this incident, to see the predicament as it were, the problem that this man is in. Now we might not perhaps think very much about a man who simply could not walk, but it is a huge problem. Now it is a huge problem for this man. And I want you to think a little about this, to ponder on this. Think about his despair. Now perhaps once upon a time, he could walk. And so perhaps along the way you know, he had a fall or something like that. He got an illness and he could not walk.

But he probably could remember a time as a little boy he could walk, and how as a little boy he was running about on the street, and he was having fun. Think of perhaps a time where he could walk out to the street. He could walk out to see his friend. He could go out and play games as it were. He could do many things. I think we can sympathize to some degree with this man perhaps today with our present situation where many of us cannot go out. Even though we can walk, but we cannot go out to do the many things that perhaps we want to do, and we are kind of stuck at home. And that is for many of us, it’s terrible enough. It’s a huge issue.

But for this man, he just cannot walk. He cannot go out. He cannot just wake up one morning and says: I have enough of this. Let me go out! He cannot. He cannot even say to himself: Ah, maybe I will go and see a doctor, and he will get me out of this situation, for no one could cure him. And can you therefore you know, kind of sympathize with this man, think about the despair of this man? And that is the picture here alright. That’s the first thing here about this man, the paralytic. Now when we think about his problem, now I want to ask you: Now when this man was brought to Jesus, now what did Jesus say to this man? What was the thing that Jesus said to this man? 

Now as I read earlier on in verse 20, now when the man was brought to Jesus, Jesus said: “Man, your sins are forgiven you.”. Man, your sins are forgiven you. In other words, Jesus wants to impress upon this man and all the others who were present at that time and all of us this morning perhaps. He wants to impress upon us a great truth that our great problem in life is not physical. Now this man might think that: Get me out of this problem!

Perhaps some of us may be crying the same. I don’t know what problem you might be in or having. Maybe you just feel that just being stuck at home is a big problem enough, or maybe some of you are with some ailment, or maybe you have lost a job, or maybe some other kind of problem, big trouble that you are in. And you might be thinking to yourself: Get me out of this problem, and all will be well. And perhaps this man who was paralyzed, maybe he was thinking like this. If only someone could bring me to Jesus.

And Jesus, I know that He can heal people because I’ve heard of the reports about Him. And Jesus was going everywhere healing people. And so get me to Jesus. He would get me out of these problems, and all would be well. But Jesus said, now that is false alright. Now very often I think we can see that. We get out of one problem, we are with another problem. But physical problem is not our big problem in life. When Jesus said to this man: “Man, your sins are forgiven you.”, He is trying to impress upon us that your big problem is this: is that you are not right with God. 

Now I want to ask you: Have you come to grasp this great truth? I say this is the first thing that we need to grasp, that our greatest need in life are not the many things, are not the many troubles that we’re all facing. Our greatest problem in life is that we are not right with God. We have sinned against Him. What is our great problem when Paul writes the gospel to the Romans? We know that was his great intention. He wanted to go to Rome to preach the gospel to them. And when he could not go there, he wrote a letter to them. And in the letter, he was basically writing or proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ to them. And in that gospel, in the proclamation of the gospel, he points out to them their chief problem. 

And so, what is their chief problem? Now listen to the Apostle Paul alright in Romans 1:18. Paul begins his gospel. Now, this is how he begins: “For the wrath”, he says, “of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness”. That is your chief problem. That is what we are about. We are all ungodly and unrighteous. That is what this world is like. That is a big problem in this world.

The big problem in this world is not the pandemic. The big problem in this world is that we are all sinning against our great and almighty God and that we need His mercy. We need His forgiveness. And that’s what Paul is saying at the start of his gospel. We need to understand the problem that Jesus has come to save us from. Jesus has not come just merely to heal you of your physical ailments and diseases, or simply to take away all these problems from your life.

And that’s what Jesus is saying to this man. That is your need. You need to be made right with God. You need to come to God through His Son. And so you see, that is what the Bible is impressing upon us. And that’s what Jesus is trying to tell us. And so that is the first thing about this whole truth about forgiveness here, this whole theme in this passage. Forgiveness. We all need forgiveness. Every one of us. “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”, and “the wages of sin is death”. The wages of sin is eternal condemnation. The wages of sin is to be cast into hell forever and ever.

That is what we are all in danger in, and that is what all we need to be rescued from. And Jesus has come and through this miracle, through His miracle, He’s trying to teach this. He’s trying to impress this upon us. Do you not see your great need? Forgiveness. So that leads us to the second thing we need to understand, we need to see about forgiveness here. And that is this: Jesus can forgive our sin. We all need forgiveness, and Jesus can forgive us.

You see, once we recognise that that indeed is our big problem, that we have sinned against our great and almighty God, and that we need forgiveness or else we are doomed to eternal destruction. Once we recognize that that is our big problem, then we ask: What shall we do? What shall we do? Answer: We need to come to Jesus. We need to come to Jesus. Now I want to point out that we as a church must understand this, that we must understand that that is the need of the people all around us, that they all need forgiveness and they all need to come to Jesus. They must be brought to Jesus Christ. Now that we see in this passage, how it is so well illustrated in verses 18 and 19. 

What are we told here in verses 18 and 19? Now listen to me, I read again in verse 18: “Then behold! In other words, there’s an exclamation here. And when Luke writes “behold”, it’s like look-see! See what? He says here in verse 18. He says: “Then behold, men brought on a bed a man who was paralyzed, whom they sought to bring in and lay before Him. And when they could not find how they might bring him in, because of the crowd, they went up on the housetop and let him down with his bed through the tiling into the midst before Jesus.”.

Now think a little deeper about you know these two verses here. Think of what is really happening here and what is behind this action as it were this drama. What is driving these men here, these four men into doing things that are so unusual? Don’t you think that this is rather unusual, that these men wanted to bring their friends to Jesus and through such extraordinary means? Now what I want to impress upon you in these two verses is that these four men that they understood. They understood what the paralytic needed. They know that their friend is in need, and what their friend need is to be brought to Jesus Christ because it’s only in Jesus that their friends have hope.

Do we as a church understand this, that the people of this world have no hope anywhere else, anywhere else in this world because their great need is to be made right with God, their great need is to be forgiven, their great need is to have their sins removed? And therefore, their great need, the great thing we need to do is to bring them to Jesus. Do we understand what these four men understood, that people must be brought to Jesus Christ?

But you see, think of the challenges before them. It is not always easy to bring people to Jesus. There will be hindrances and obstacles, and so on. Obstacles like people are busy, or we ourselves are busy. We cannot bring them. Or I don’t know what to say to them, I don’t know how to invite my friend to come. But these four men gave no excuses, they’re such a great example of what a Christian ministry, the ministry of the gospel ought to be. Give no excuses, people must be brought to Jesus Christ. Period. And by hook as it were or by crook, we have to bring people to Jesus. That is how they thought because there was no other way. There was no other way their friends could be helped. They knew that their friends needed Jesus.

I want to ask you this morning: Do you have a friend, a brother, or a sister, a neighbour, a colleague, a classmate, someone whom you know? Do you desire them to be saved? Do you desire their sins to be forgiven? Do you want them to bring to Jesus cause there’s no other way for your friend to get well, spiritually speaking? There’s no other way than to bring them to Jesus. Now all of us must be like these four men, one way or another. We will bring our loved ones, we will bring our friends to Jesus. And then they brought this friend to Jesus. As I said earlier on, when they brought this paralytic to Jesus, now what did Jesus do to this man? What did Jesus do to this man? 

Now I want you to imagine now as these friends lowering down the bed as it were of this paralytic right in front of Jesus with all the crowd, and because they were amazed and they were watching, what do you think or what do you expect to happen? What do you think the people expect to happen when this paralytic was brought to Jesus? Now I want to ask you the same question: What do you expect to happen when you come to Jesus Christ or when you bring your friend to Jesus Christ? I believe their friends merely expected Jesus to make this man walk again because this man could not walk.

Now I am afraid that that is exactly the same expectation of so many people, that we bring people to the church, we bring people to Jesus of no other expectation other than Jesus make them well again physically. I remember a friend, he was my classmate. Now he have never brought his father alright to the church. But one day, he brought his father to the church. His father was on the wheelchair, and there was an advertisement alright saying that there was this healing rally. And so he brought his father to that healing meeting alright the rally there and expecting that his father would be healed. But of course, he was disappointed. He brought his father there, and his father was not healed and was brought back home in the same wheelchair.

My question is this: Why did you bring your father to the church? Why did you bring your father to the church? Just to be healed of his physical ailment? Just so that he could walk again? That is the only time you bring your father to the church, and that is the only reason why you bring your father to the church. And I want to say that there are so many people today are like that. They wouldn’t go to church. They wouldn’t go to church except when they have some problems in their life. Maybe a physical ailment or maybe business failure or something like that, and they hope by coming to the church, Jesus will give them success again.

Now that is not the reason why we bring people to the church. The reason must be this: it must be for the forgiveness of their sin. And that’s why Jesus did something that they totally didn’t expect. Now the crowd there, they all totally didn’t expect because to this man, to this man who obviously needing a cure, Jesus said to him: “Man, your sins are forgiven.”. He did not say: Man, you are now healed. That was the first thing alright Jesus said to this person. Now we all need to be forgiven of our sin. We must understand, we must realise that that is our greatest need in life. Our greatest need.

And we must also understand that only Jesus can forgive us, that only Jesus can forgive us. Only Jesus can forgive the sin of our friends. Now let us come to Jesus and let us bring our friends to Jesus because Jesus alone can save us from our sin. Jesus can forgive us because Jesus is God. And that’s why when Jesus said: “Man, your sins are forgiven.”, the Pharisees and the scribes, they were offended. Now they were mad as it were. They say: How can this man say such a thing? He speaks blasphemy because they understand that only God can forgive sin. When Jesus said: “Man, your sins are forgiven you.”, He is claiming to be God because He indeed is the Son of God.

Now thirdly, now I say our greatest need and this story tells us, it’s not all the problems that we face in life today, but is that we might be made right with God, that our sins might be forgiven and Jesus alone can forgive us. Thirdly, faith in Jesus Christ is the only way to receive forgiveness. Faith in Jesus Christ is the only way to receive forgiveness. In other words, if you wish to be forgiven of your sin, then you must believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. That is the question they’ve been asked time and time again in the Bible.

You remember the Philippine jailer asked Paul: “What must I do to be saved”. And Paul answered: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved.”. And Paul wrote to the Romans in Romans 10, and he says if you confess with your mouth and believe in your heart that Jesus is Lord, you shall be saved. Now that is how we can be saved. That’s how we can be forgiven of our sin, and that is to come and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now that begs the question. I want to ask you: Do you have faith? Do you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ? Maybe some of you say: Yes, I believe. And I want to ask: How do we know? How can I know that you believe? You see that in this passage, Jesus was delighted alright when He saw this man alright, these four men and when He saw the paralytic in front of him. We are told in verse 40 that “when He saw their faith”, now Jesus was delighted when He saw their faith (Mistakenly mentioned “verse 40”, supposedly “verse 20”). Now when he said here, “when He saw their faith”, it means this: that faith is something that is visible. It can be seen. 

You might ask: How can faith be seen? How can we see your faith? How do people see your faith? Well in the Bible you see, the Bible tells us faith is visible in your life. That’s what we see in Hebrews chapter 11 for example. Now all through that chapter in Hebrews 11, we see the faith of these people by the way they lived their life. It is said there by faith Noah built the ark. His building of the ark demonstrates or shows his faith, his trust in God. He’s believing that what God said was true, that there would be a flood. Or else he wouldn’t be building the ark.

We are told in Hebrews 11 that by faith Abraham departed and go to a land which he did not know. Why did he leave his family and to go to somewhere which he didn’t know where he was going? Because God told him to do that. He trusted in the Word of God. And so we see again and again that the faith of the people of God are demonstrated, are seen by the way they lived their lives. That’s why James put it that way: “You show me your faith, and I’ll show you my faith” by what? By my works. By my life alright.

And so, do you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ? Remember that is the only way to be saved, the only way to be forgiven. If you have faith, is there any evidence that your faith is true? Is there anything to show? Is there anything to show? Let me end by asking you again: Do you see your true need? Do you see what Jesus is trying to point out here about our true need in the midst of all the troubles and all the problems that we have? Do we see our true problem? Do you see that forgiveness is what you need? Then come to Jesus. Come to Jesus. Do you see what is the true need of your friends, your relatives, your neighbour? Then bring them to Jesus because only Jesus can help them. Because only Jesus can forgive them. Let us pray. 

“Our Father in heaven, we know that it’s so easy for us to miss the point that our great need in life is to be made right with God, especially in the midst of all the problems that we are facing today and to think that our big problems are the problems of this life. And so, we pray that You might impress upon all of us here this morning, wherever we might be, that we need to be made right with God, and the only way is to come through the Lord Jesus Christ, by trusting in Him.

And so we pray that You’ll also help us to see as a church that that is indeed the need of the people of this world, the people all around us, that our passion, our great burden would be like the burden of these four men who brought their friend to Jesus. Help us also to have the same burden to want to bring our friend to Jesus, for this, we pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.”

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.