Desperate to Get to Jesus

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Well, I want to start off by telling you about a time that I was desperate to get home. About four or five years ago, I don’t know, the years start to run together after a while, but about four or five years ago, they had the Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Phoenix, and I decided I would drive out for it. Charlie didn’t want to go because she was about 84 months pregnant with Charlie at the time.

No, she was, what is that, 36 weeks? she was within a month of giving birth to Charlie. And so she really didn’t even want me to go, except her doctor, who is a fellow believer, and she thinks the wisest man on the planet.

He and I told, we talked to her together, and he gave me the green light to go to Phoenix. So I went for the meeting. I actually went in a few days early because there was a conference on native ministry that was being held in conjunction with the convention.

So I went a few days early. and before I left I put my vehicle in the shop had had a tune-up a full checkout of everything so I knew it should get me to to Phoenix and back so I was there for about a week and and realized Phoenix is not Oklahoma and I so I was already homesick my dad had decided he was going to fly out to Phoenix and meet me at the end and ride back with me because he and I were gonna we’re gonna to spend about a day and a half in Santa Fe, my favorite place on earth that’s not part of Oklahoma, and so we were going to spend some time there. So we headed back, and we got into Santa Fe late one evening, and had dinner, went to the hotel and all that.

We got up the next morning, and I said, you know, I’d like to hit one or two places. Charla wanted me to pick something up at one of the shops down there. I said, why don’t we head home after that?

Which is unusual for me, because we had all these plans of stuff we wanted to do. And he said, if that’s what you want to do, that’s fine. I’m just along for the ride.

Something said, head home. Just head home. So we started heading toward home.

We’re driving down I-40, and I just got a weird feeling. We pulled over at Dollar General in a little town called Santa Rosa, New Mexico. There’s nothing there.

Dollar General and a few other places. And when we tried to start the vehicle back up to leave Dollar General, it didn’t start right. It just didn’t feel like it had much power.

Okay, that’s weird. I turned it off, and then it wouldn’t start at all again. We realized the battery was dead, so thankfully we had pulled over instead of just being out on the highway.

We happened to break down right next door to a garage. It’s about 4. 15 or so.

We disconnect the battery, take it up, walk it up this hill to this garage to get it checked out. The guy tests it. He says, yeah, it’s dead.

I can charge it up if it’s still good. He said he tested it. He said, it’s still good.

So it’s got to be your alternator. I thought this is why I had it checked before I left Oklahoma. I’d been out of town for over a week at this point.

We were two days out from Father’s Day and I was desperate to get home. He said, okay, do you think you can take a look at it? And he said, sure, but we close at five.

Okay, any place else in there? Is there a firestone here? Nope, just us.

Okay, so he puts the battery on the charger. He sits down and kicks back with a beer. He’s just sailing into, you know, Friday night closing time.

He gets it charged up, and Dad said, what do you want to do? And I asked the guy, where’s the nearest car lot? He said, oh, there’s one in Tucumcari.

Perfect. So he charged us up. We got to Tucumcari.

There’s not a car lot in Tucumcari, at least not that we could find. So dad said, again, what do you want to do? I ran into an auto parts store.

I bought another battery. I said, we’re headed for Amarillo tonight. So we had our extra battery.

We got just across the Texas line, and the battery he charged up died again. So we swapped it out, and we got to Amarillo, got a hotel room, got up the next morning. I went and bought a truck.

That’s why I have that white truck that you all see sitting out here. I went and bought a truck. Charles said, I can’t believe you bought a truck because I’m not a big spender.

I can’t believe you just went and traded in your vehicle. I was determined I was getting home that day. I didn’t care at that point what it cost me.

I was getting home that day. I hadn’t seen my family in close to 10 days by that point. We were coming up on Father’s Day.

I was not going to miss it. I was going to do whatever I could do within my power to get home. I was desperate at that point.

I was not about to start life anew in some little town in New Mexico that wasn’t Santa Fe. It wasn’t even Santa Fe. I might have been okay with that.

Just sent for everybody later. Y’all come on. I was not about to do that.

I was desperate to get home. And so because of that, I did some things that were uncharacteristic of me, like hiking through the desert and spending thousands of dollars to buy a vehicle that I hadn’t planned on. But sometimes when you’re desperate, you do desperate things.

And I was desperate to get home. Tonight in Mark chapter 2, we’re going to look at a story about some people who were desperate to get somewhere. Mark chapter 2.

They were desperate to see Jesus. And because they were desperate to see Jesus, they did some things that seemed pretty extraordinary. So we’re going to be in Mark chapter 2, starting in verse 1.

When you get there, if you’ll stand with me, if you’re able to, as we read from God’s Word together. If you’re using your phone to look at the Scriptures, you can find a link to it right there in our bulletin. Otherwise, it’ll be on the screen for you if you don’t have either of those.

Mark chapter 2, starting in verse 1. It says, And again he, that’s Jesus, entered Capernaum after some days, and it was heard that he was in the house. Immediately many gathered together, so that there was no longer room to receive them, not even near the door.

And he preached the word to them. Then they came to him, bringing a paralytic, who was carried by four men. And when they could not come near him because of the crowd, They uncovered the roof where he was.

So when they had broken through, they let down the bed on which the paralytic was lying. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, Son, your sins are forgiven you. And some of the scribes were sitting there and reasoning in their hearts, Why does this man speak blasphemies like this?

Who can forgive sins but God alone? But immediately when Jesus perceived in his spirit that they reasoned thus within themselves, He said to them, Why do you reason about these things in your hearts? Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, Your sins are forgiven you?

Or to say, Arise, take up your bed and walk? But that you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins. He said to the paralytic, I say to you, Arise, take up your bed and go to your house.

And immediately he arose, took up the bed, and went out in the presence of them all, so that all were amazed and glorified, saying, We never saw anything like this. And you may be seated. So we’ve already talked a little bit about the crowd over the last few weeks, that because this leper opened his mouth and told everybody what Jesus had done in healing him, when Jesus told him, Keep it to yourself.

Keep it quiet for right now. The leper opened his mouth anyway. News got around not only of the fact that Jesus was doing miraculous things, but he was doing impossible, miraculous things.

Word got around and Jesus was just mobbed by people. It said he could not freely go in and out of the cities. And so a lot of times he would spend his time at this point out in the highways and byways trying to do ministry, and yet people would come out from the towns, and even there he was being mobbed by people.

He just managed to get into Capernaum again. He thought, let’s try this again. he goes into a house, word gets out that Jesus is there, everybody flocks there.

Everybody wanted to see Jesus. And people were willing to go and crowd around him. They were interested.

They were interested in seeing Jesus. They were interested in the healings that he would perform. They were interested in the miracles.

But this group of people, these four men and the man that they had on the bed, they were desperate to see Jesus. I’m sure there were a lot of people who came got turned away because the crowd was so thick you couldn’t even get into the house. And they had different ailments and things.

And I’m sure there are people that couldn’t get in and went home. These people were desperate. They had the desperation that comes from knowing that Jesus is your only hope and acting like it.

And so already they have stood out from the crowd. They’ve distinguished themselves because the crowd, this whole crowd, knew that Jesus could heal people’s afflictions. You know, they had some belief in Jesus’ power, or at least Jesus’ track record, as somebody who was able to do remarkable things, and they wanted to go and see.

That’s why it tells us in the first two verses here, that as soon as they heard He was in the house, immediately many gathered there. I mean, they just showed up out of nowhere. Those of you who were here for vacation Bible school, one of the songs we did was, This Train is Bound for Glory.

Jojo loves that song, all right? And I forget how it even came up last night, but my parents and Janice, we were all sitting in the living room, and I told our, I don’t want to say her name in case anybody watching at home has them, our Amazon device. Don’t say her name or she’ll never stop talking.

But I said, hey you, play this train is bound for glory. I said, let’s see how long it takes. Well, we hear the beginning whistle.

I said, let’s see how long it takes Jojo to, and there she is. I mean, she was just, It was immediate. All right, you play that song, and it’s like she just comes flying in from wherever she was.

That’s sort of how it was with these people. Let’s see how long it takes them to find out that Jesus is, oh, here they are. You know, they’re just right there as soon as word gets out.

And it’s such a huge crowd that they can’t even get near the door. Now, Jesus, his mission, his goal is to tell them about the kingdom of God, and so he wasn’t going to waste the opportunity. It says he began preaching to them.

He began telling them the good news. He began sharing God’s word. But why was this crowd here?

We’ve already mentioned it at the end of Mark 1. There was that miracle with the leper. And so the massive crowds kept following him because they wanted to see what he was going to do.

And I don’t fault them for that. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to see what Jesus is going to say, what Jesus is going to do. There’s nothing wrong with being interested in Jesus, but it should go a little deeper than just being interested in Jesus.

We’re not just clicking follow on Facebook here with Jesus. We’re not just clicking like so we can see what he’s up to. And that’s where the crowd was.

They wanted to see something incredible. They had no doubts about Jesus’ abilities as a miracle worker, but that’s about as far as it went. They just wanted somebody who was going to meet what they saw were their needs.

We do that with people and places all the time. I will be really excited to pull up at McAllister’s because I’m hungry. today I was starving when we got out of here I was really excited to pull up at McAllister’s because I knew I was going to eat but once I ate and my stomach was full and the kids started getting restless I was no longer excited to be at McAllister’s right there was a there was an element of them meeting my perceived need and then I’m moving on and that’s where these people were with Jesus they had no doubt that he could heal their ailments they had no doubt that he could satisfy their curiosity.

They had no doubt that he could do something that would amaze them, but that’s about as far as it went. For this other group of people, there was something more there. So the crowd knew that Jesus could heal people’s afflictions, but few people understood his ability to forgive sins.

Few people really understood who Jesus was or what he was about at that time. This group of four, they carried their friends of the house. They couldn’t get in, and so they lowered him through the roof.

When’s the last time you were that determined to make something work that you were willing to go through the roof. I don’t know about back then, but I know today roofs are very expensive. And so you’re risking a lot, because what if the homeowner comes out and has some things to say to you about the hole you’re tearing in their roof?

They were that determined. They are thinking outside the box here. They’re thinking, we are going to do whatever we have to to get to Jesus.

We are going to take extraordinary means to get to Jesus. And so seeing their determination to get to Him, Jesus said to them in verse 5, said to the man, Son, your sins are forgiven you. Now this verse has puzzled me for quite some time.

Years ago, I was given this story to preach on at a church camp. And I ran up to this verse and thought, what do I do with this? Because nowhere in Scripture does it teach that somebody’s sins are forgiven because of somebody else’s faith or because of somebody else’s actions.

But when He saw their faith, He said to the man who was in the bed, your sins are forgiven you. And I thought, what do you do with that? And so I did what any preacher worth his salt did.

I avoided that part of the story. But I still wrestled with it. And looking at it again this week, I realized when he sees the faith, the faith that got that man to the roof was not limited to the four people who carried him up there.

We don’t see any indication that the paralyzed man is up there against his will screaming, no, no, no, don’t take me up on the roof. I don’t need to see Jesus that badly. Have you ever tried to carry somebody somewhere they didn’t want to go?

Have any of you ever raised children that they just kind of go limp whenever? I have one that’s kind of heavy anyway, and then he doesn’t want to go and he just goes limp, and it’s like he weighs more than me. I don’t think they were carrying struggling dead weight with this man.

When he saw their faith, it wasn’t just the faith of the four that carried him up to the roof. It was the faith of the one that got carried and said, is a good idea. This is what we need to do.

I’m willing to try anything to get to Jesus. It took me a lot of years to realize their faith wasn’t limited just to the people doing the carrying, but also the one being carried. And so seeing this faith, seeing this faith that didn’t just say, well, we’re interested in Jesus, seeing this faith that didn’t just say, well, we believe Jesus can do certain things, but seeing this faith that was so strong that they were willing to go to any lengths to get to Jesus.

He looked at that faith and said, your sins are forgiven. So they came to him for what this man needed, and he walked away with what he really, really needed. See, the healing of his paralysis was great, but eventually that body is going to decay and die.

Jesus dealt with the need of the soul that lives forever. And immediately the scribes sort of recoiled internally. You ever heard somebody say something that just kind of made you cringe because you knew it wasn’t right?

That was their reaction. Jesus said, son, your sins are forgiven. And they go, oh, I don’t think so.

Maybe they didn’t do it physically, outwardly, but they recoiled at this suggestion. And because they’ve said God only is the one that can forgive sins, they were right about that. But because they said only God could forgive sins, and you’re saying you can forgive sins, Jesus, you’re a blasphemer.

And notice, they’re not saying this out loud. They’re having this conversation in their minds. I do this all the time.

I love having arguments with people in my mind because I always win, right? When it happens inside, I always know the right things to say and I always win. They’re having this argument in their minds that he must be a blasphemer because he’s claiming to be God.

But the funny thing is here, this man that they think is not God reads their thoughts and answers what they’re thinking. Now, a skeptic might be able to say, well, he could see on their face that they were bothered by what he was saying, maybe. But for Jesus to answer the exact question that they were having, using the same wording that they were thinking in their minds, I would think if I were them, that’s a pretty good indication that he is what he claimed to be and not what they thought he was.

So he read their minds and said, you’re bothered that I’m telling him his sins are forgiven. Let me ask you, what is easier to tell him his sins are forgiven or to tell him to rise up and walk? Neither one is easy.

Well, I take that back. No, they’re both easy. They’re both easy to say.

They take roughly the same amount of breath. Your sins are forgiven. Rise up and walk.

I haven’t counted the syllables, but they’re pretty close. They’re both easy to say. They’re both impossible for somebody to do.

I cannot tell you, I cannot stand here and tell you, it’s all right, your sins are forgiven. I can tell you what God’s Word says on the subject, that if you’ve trusted Christ and you’ve asked His forgiveness, but whether you’ve actually done that or not, where you stand with Him is between you and Him. I can just tell you what His Word says.

I can’t tell you where your heart is. But I can’t look at you and absolve you of your sins. I also can’t look at you and tell you get up and walk.

If you’re my child, I can. But if you’re in here with an issue of paralysis of some sort. I don’t have that power.

And neither did the scribes who were there. And I’m sure they began to reason through these things. Well, they’re both easy to say.

They’re both not easy to do. And so Jesus’s answer was to show that he was capable of far more than the crowd gave him credit for. His answer to this was to prove to them that he was capable of far more than they gave him credit for.

He could forgive any sin just as easily as he could heal any disease. And so the next we see Jesus do is Jesus affirmed that he is God and he asserted his authority both to forgive and to judge. To talk to them about sin and also talk to them about the forgiveness of sins.

And unlike a teacher, unlike somebody like the scribes or unlike somebody like me who can merely go to the authority of God’s word and say this is what he says, Jesus was able to say this is what I say. A pretty big claim. He said to them in verse 10, starting in verse 10, but that you may know that the Son of Man has the power on earth to forgive sins.

He said, what I’m about to do is prove to you that I can forgive sins like I said I did and like you doubted. I’m going to prove it to you. He turns to the paralyzed man.

He said, I say to you, arise, take up your bed and go to your house. And seemingly the scribes had already realized that these things are both equally easy to say and both equally difficult to do. And so he said, I’m going to prove to you my ability to do one by doing the other.

Says to the man, get up, take up your bed and walk. Now there’s no doubt in my mind that Jesus had compassion toward this man. I don’t think Jesus was just proving a point.

And I believe Jesus knew all along he was going to heal the man too. There’s no doubt in my mind that Jesus had compassion and he was willing to heal him for that reason. But the way he handled it The reason why he went through this whole conversation, the reason why he started with the forgiveness of sins, was to demonstrate his power and authority.

It was to demonstrate to everybody who was watching that he is God. It’s to demonstrate to those who are watching that this group of five people were right in having that kind of faith in him that made them so desperate to get to him like he was their only hope, because he was. So if he could supernaturally heal that man’s physical problem, then they needed to take seriously his claims to be able to supernaturally heal his spiritual problem.

And so when he told them, I’m going to show you what I can do by doing this, he was letting the authorities know, you can’t do either, but I can take care of both. And by claiming the ability to forgive sins, Jesus was claiming to be God. Because that was their big objection.

You can’t forgive sins, only God can forgive sins. And Jesus said, right, I can forgive sins. You see there that that’s a claim to be God.

And I point that out because there are people, even in Christian circles, who will try to teach that Jesus was just a good man, just a good moral teacher. They will say he never claimed to be God. They will say that the assertion that he claimed to be God, that came years later.

That was introduced in the later Gospels, like John, because John shouts about the deity of Jesus Christ. Whereas they say Mark, which was arguably the earliest gospel written, uses its whisper voice. And Jesus doesn’t claim to be God. Right here in Mark chapter 2, we have this argument with him and the scribes where they say, only God can forgive sins.

And Jesus says, you’re right, I can forgive sins. That sounds to me like a claim to be God. Unless I’m missing something.

Sounds like a claim to be God. He simply argued. He didn’t argue with their point that only God could do it.

He just argued that he could. And so those who exhibited faith in him, more than just the curiosity in him, more than just the interest in him, but those who showed faith in him, they were rewarded with forgiveness. And the paralyzed man was rewarded with healing.

But honestly, the forgiveness is the more important part because it deals with a deeper problem and a more long-lasting problem. So we look at this story, and by the way, we see in verse 12, when Jesus told him to get up and walk, he did. He got up, took up his bed, he went out of the presence of them all so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, we never saw anything like this.

So the rest of the crowd got to show that they were there for. But even at that, they gave God the glory for what Jesus had just done. And so we look at this story, and this group of people on the roof is an example to us of the kind of faith we ought to have.

It’s an example to us of the kind of faith that is determined to get to Jesus. And what separates that from a more passive faith, what separates that from a more laid-back faith, is the realization that Jesus is our only hope. There’s a big difference between showing up for Jesus because of what you might get, and chasing after Jesus because He’s your only hope.

We see that in the difference between the crowd and the group of five. The crowd was just there for Jesus because of what they might get. The group of five was there because they knew Jesus was their only hope.

Yes, I know they were still after something. They were still after this healing. but they recognized this was something only Jesus could do.

I read this and I think about people in other countries. I think about people who walk hours and hours to get to church and they stay there all day and sit on dirt floors in ten buildings with no air conditioning. And they stay there all day and then they walk hours home.

And they do that just for the privilege of hearing God’s Word taught and worshiping together. I think of what I saw so many times on Facebook a few weeks ago that said, this Sunday, the churches in Afghanistan will gather and they will likely die. This weekend, the churches in America will gather.

And it had an asterisk with it, with all these exceptions, unless it’s rainy, unless it’s nice outside, unless there’s a ball game on. And it went on and it was convicting to me. And I know some of those things out there, they kind of sound like they’re just trying to put everybody on a guilt trip.

But it was convicting to me to realize how often I’m guilty of showing up for Jesus because of what I feel like I’m going to get versus chasing after Him like He’s my only hope. Real faith in Him. Real faith in Him that believes who He is and believes what He can do.

It doesn’t just say Jesus is a part of my life, but it says I will move heaven and earth figuratively. I will do everything in my power to get closer to Him. I will throw aside every weight and run after Him.

I will do whatever I have to do as the Holy Spirit empowers me to follow Him and walk with Him because He is my only hope. That kind of faith that understands who He is and what He really can do will make us desperate to get to Him. And folks, they’re an example to us of that.

If we truly believe that Jesus is the Son of God, if we truly believe that He is God the Son in human flesh and that He’s able to forgive sins and that He’s able to heal us, that He’s able to pick us up, that He’s able to clean us up and dust us off and send us on the right road with Him, if we really believe in His ability to transform our lives, then our pursuit of Him ought to take precedence over everything else.