Sermon: The Messiah is God

Matthew’s Gospel as the Story of the Messiah’s Authority

Praise God. If you would, open your Bibles to Matthew chapter 9, Matthew, Gospel according to Matthew chapter 9. As you guys get there, remember that through the inspiration of the Spirit of God, Matthew writes this gospel to tell a story.

Not a myth, not a story of a hero that is to come, but he tells you the story of what took place in time and in space on this soil, in this world that God has made. He tells you the story about the hero who has finally broken into history and accomplished our salvation.

And he orders this story in such a way as to convince you, again through the inspiration of the Spirit of God, that Jesus is in fact Mashiach. That he is the Messiah, that he is God, that he brings salvation, that he's fulfilled all the promises, that he has all authority.

Let me remind you of really the last thing that Matthew says. At the end of the Gospel according to Matthew, Matthew chapter 28 verses 18 through 20, it can really in some sense be the summary of the entire story.

Remember that Jesus has accomplished salvation, he's died, he has come back to life again, he has walked among his people after being resurrected from the dead. As promised in the Old Testament Scriptures and even in his own promises.

So he's accomplished everything and now he goes to take his rightful place on the throne of the universe. The throne over heaven and earth. Here's the words that can again be the summary of what Matthew is telling you all along.

He starts in chapter 1, he has authority, he has the royal right to the throne of David. That place, that position of authority over the world, Matthew chapter 1. And the story moves towards that final answer of who has the authority, all authority.

And Matthew is telling that story in bits and pieces. You're going to see that through Matthew 8 and 9, that that is what Matthew is getting at. And in Matthew 28, 18 through 20, again that summary, Jesus says, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Go therefore, because all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me, go therefore and make disciples of all the nations. Baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.

And he says, lo, I'm with you always, even to the end of the age. And so that's really the summary, all authority. And that is what Matthew is going to be telling us here through the circumstances, through the actual historical narrative of what Jesus actually did and said.

And so the text is Matthew chapter 9, verses 1 through 8. Matthew's account, just so you know, is the shortest of the synoptics. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell this story. And you're going to see all three of them today telling this story for more details from each one.

Matthew's is the shortest. Gets to the point quickly. Hear now the reading of God's holy and inspired word. And getting into a boat, he crossed over and came to his own city. And behold, Matthew likes to do that, look.

Some people brought to him a paralytic lying on a bed. And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, Take heart, my son, your sins are forgiven. And behold, some of the scribes said to themselves, This man is blaspheming.

But Jesus, knowing their thoughts, said, Why do you think evil in your hearts? For which is easier to say, your sins are forgiven, or to say, rise up and walk. But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.

He then said to the paralytic, Rise, pick up your bed, and go home. And he rose and went home. When the crowd saw this, they were afraid. And they glorified God, who had given such authority to men. Thus far is the reading of God's holy word.

Let's pray. Father, thank you so much that you've given us your word. Lord, I know that we all just take advantage of these blessings and these gifts that you've given to us. And in particular, we take advantage of the fact that we know you.

We're forgiven by you. We have salvation, and we actually have your words, your message, your good news. We have it in our hands. Lord, I know that we, at times, can be indifferent. We get jaded to these glorious truths.

Lord, we can be selfish at times. We can be prideful. Lord, sometimes we're consumed by our circumstances, and we forget to see just how glorious you are. Lord, we miss so much of you because of a lack of faith.

God, please grant to us today faith, the ability to trust you. Lord, let us see how unbelievably earth-shattering this is right before us. I pray that people leave here, and they forget me and remember you.

I pray that I would decrease, Christ would increase. I pray that the words would be words from you, God. In Jesus' name, amen. So, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, we've talked about over the last couple of weeks, are part of what we call the synoptic tradition.

Synoptic means seeing together. So, when you hear that word, that fancy word, synoptic gospel, synoptic tradition, just know that synoptic means seeing together, and it essentially means that you can line Matthew, Mark, and Luke up at certain points, and you can have them telling the same story from their own vantage point.

So, the differences sometimes will just be in terms of what's highlighted. Sometimes Matthew doesn't feel the need to tell you the entire end of the story, but Mark really wants you to know what happened to the guy.

And so, for example, last week, we talked about Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and the account of the demonic possession. And Matthew only has one emphasis, but Mark and Luke want to tell you what happened to the person who was freed from the demonic possession.

He received Christ. He believed in Jesus. He experienced salvation. He was freed. And so, those accounts want to tell you that. But Matthew, Mark, and Luke can be lined up side by side, and you can see the stories from different angles.

So, Matthew 9, 1 -8 is our starting point today, but Mark 2, 2 -12 is Mark's account of the same event. Luke 5, 17 -26 is Luke's account of the same event. And we're going to be going in and out of those today.

So, you want to go ahead and get your hands ready, your fingers ready. If you want to stick them in your Bibles, if you still carry a Bible, and they're not on your smartphone or whatever you have. Stick your fingers there in those, because we're going to go back and forth through there.

A quick recap, just a quick one. The authority of the Messiah is what's being highlighted by Matthew. So, remember now where we've gone, right? Matthew starts. He explains to you that Jesus is the Messiah.

He has a right to the throne. Matthew 2, you immediately have the story on full display.

What's the story?

That Jesus is the King. He's the Messiah. He's going to bring salvation. And the ends of the earth, the Psalms say, all the families of the earth will return and worship the Lord. Isaiah 2, all the nations streaming up to the mountain of God.

Isaiah 9, a kingdom that never ends. There's an increase of his government and of peace. It'll never end. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will accomplish this. God's going to do this in the world. They knew the story.

They knew that the promise to Abraham, as the singular promise to focus on, was that Abraham would have descendants as numerous as the stars. Not just Jews, Gentiles also. In Matthew 2, Matthew puts that right in front of your face, because he has the first people coming to the Messiah, pagans.

The Christmas story, we're going to celebrate it like we're going to be fanatics. I am. I am. In the next two months, right? The Christmas story, the birth of Jesus, we love that. You go to the mall, you go to places where they're not Christian, but they're still singing the songs about silent night.

They're singing the songs about the Messiah. You know the story, and so does the world. Joy to the world, the Lord has come. Let earth receive her king. Not let Jews receive their king, but let earth receive their king.

Jew and Gentile together, and Matthew screams that at you. He's got the authority. Pagans are coming, and they're like, where's the king of the Jews? We've come to worship him. And then you have Matthew moving that story along, until finally he gets to the Sermon on the Mount, and Jesus sits and begins to teach his people.

He begins to bless them. The beatitudes are there. Blessed are you. Blessed are you. Blessed are you. And then the Sermon on the Mount is over now, and Matthew moves now into what? The historical narrative.

Jesus walking among us. And what does it say is his practice? What is his method? It says that he's teaching in the synagogues, he's proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and he's healing all their sicknesses and diseases.

But Matthew does something. He shows you the authority of Jesus. Not just his teaching authority, showing you this majestic sermon, the most popular sermon in the history of the world, on the lips of Jesus.

It doesn't matter who you are, what religion you are, this is the most downloaded sermon in history. The Sermon on the Mount. And he tells you about the authority of Jesus. First, Jesus going to heal a leper.

Matthew chapter 8. And he moves through the leper, and he shows the sick slave, and he shows Peter's mom being healed of a fever. And so what's Matthew doing there? He's showing you Jesus' authority over our sicknesses and diseases, and he says specifically, it was in fulfillment of Isaiah 53, that he's borne our illnesses and diseases.

By his wounds we are healed. So Matthew shows you the authority of the Messiah over sickness and disease. Chapter 8, verses 1 through 17. Next, he shows you the Messiah's authority over our lives. In discipleship, Matthew 8, 18 through 22.

And where do you see that? You see that very clearly in those calls of Jesus, starting in Matthew chapter 8, where he says things to people like, foxes have holes, the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man is nowhere to lay his head.

You sure you want to follow me? I'm homeless. Jesus does that, right? He guts you of your idolatry. He shows you your hypocrisy. He shows you just the shell of a person sometimes you are, and I am. Because he actually goes for the heart.

He goes for the jugular every time with every person he's talking to, and he would do the same for you. If he were here speaking to you today in the flesh, he would go right after your gods. He would go right after your hypocrisy.

He would show it to you, and he'd call you to leave it to come to follow him. He doesn't let people come to him halfway. He doesn't let people be almost Christians. As a matter of fact, you know the story, I've said it so many times.

When large crowds would follow Jesus, he would actually tell them to go away. In a sense, he would talk people out of following him. We don't do that anymore. We do everything we can to give people popcorn, bubble gum, and cotton candy to come to church.

We do everything we can to make the experience something they'll enjoy so that they stick around. We do everything we can not to confront, and Jesus shows his authority over your lives, and then he tells you to abandon everything to come to him.

Your mom and your dad have to be less than me. You have to love them less than me. Your children, they have to come second to me. Your lives, your career, your money, your home, everything has to be secondary to me.

No other gods before me. That's what Jesus gets at, so the authority of Jesus over our lives. Next, Matthew shows you the authority of Jesus over the physical world, and now here's the thing. We know that there's more going on in that text of Jesus asleep on the boat than merely Jesus stilling the storm and telling the waters to calm down.

We all know that. Every one of us can find ourselves in that story of Jesus on the boat. The disciples are there freaking out. Here's the Son of God, the Lord of Glory, the Bible calls him. He's God himself asleep on a pillow on the boat, and here's the disciples freaking out because of the waves.

But it really happened. They were really on a boat. You can go to that place today. You can get on that water, and the same kind of thing could happen to you. A storm could rage, and you can get tossed back and forth and maybe lose your lives.

It's a real place. You can touch it. You can smell the air. You can feel the dirt. You could splash around in the water. That's what Jesus is about. It's the real world, God touching the earth. It's not myths.

It's not private revelation that exists in the mind of the person giving it only. This is Jesus in earth's history, and when he came, he split it. But in that account, Matthew shows you the authority of Jesus over the physical elements.

He's got it over sickness and disease. He's got it over our lives. He's got it over the world itself. He spins it. It says in Hebrews 1 that Jesus upholds all things by the word of his power, and what that means is he carries everything along to its intended destination.

It doesn't make any sense from a human perspective. Just think for a second about this. The more that we discover today in science, observation, not only does it confirm everything we know because of what the Bible says, but the more we discover, we discover how unbelievably small that we are and insignificant in a sense that we are.

And here's the crazy thing. The deeper we go into the universe. Great example. Oh, my goodness. This year, we got asked to go to the Ark Encounter with Ken Ham. We got to go and do an interview. Some of you guys saw that on Apology at TV.

We got to be there and walk through it while they're constructing it. We also got to go to the Creation Museum. If you ever get a chance to go, yes, it's worth it. You really should go to the Creation Museum.

It's amazing. It seems like it's unending. It gets bigger and bigger the more you walk through. You're like, where was all this outside? It's just huge. But they have this one thing where it's this, what do you call it?

Is it a planetarium? Is that what you call it where it's this big, like, bubble you're in, and you lean back into the chairs, and you're looking up, and they have this film that you watch above you where it takes you from, like, Earth all the way out to the deepest parts of the universe that we've been able to see.

And at a certain point, I remember I got near the end of that, and I had this moment where I was kind of beside myself. I had a moment where I felt fear, awe, overcome. I had a moment where I almost had an out-of-body experience.

Don't read too much into that. I mean in the sense that I discovered in that moment watching this how small I really am and how big God is, and it terrified me. I genuinely had a moment where I was terrified.

And we look at that, and we think about how ginormous this universe is. And listen, Jesus is right now holding up and controlling the largest sun in our entire universe. And by the way, our sun is so small compared to the greatest suns in the universe, we haven't even begun to understand.

And Jesus, he's hanging it together. Right now, Saturn and its rings are hanging out, doing what they're doing, looking amazing for Jesus because he's upholding it. And there are things in the universe right now that Jesus is guiding and directing that we will never, ever see.

And it sits there glorious and screaming the glory of Jesus Christ, and it's for him. It's for him to look at. It's for his glory. It's to shout how amazing he is, and he just spits it into existence.

He says a word, and it goes into existence. And when he was on that boat on that pillow, here's a raging storm, and here's Jesus' disciples freaking out. Don't you care that we're perishing, Jesus? And Jesus rises up and speaks his authority over the waves.

And what does he say? He says, be still, and in a moment the waters hush. They have to. He commands them. He made them, and he speaks, and they obey. Jesus controls the storm. He shows his authority over the physical world.

Next, Matthew 8, 28 -34. Matthew shows you Jesus' authority over demons, the evil spirits. Now, this was something that was interesting because, listen, they got to see, and they felt like they can handle the stuff that Jesus had already done.

He healed sickness and disease. He controls the physical world. They got to see it in front of them. But one of the things that was a fear for them is what they could not see, and what was that? Demons.

They could see the manifestation of it in front of them in their time because this was the time where Messiah was coming to bring his salvation. There was a fervor of demonic activity, and Jesus has control even over that.

He says a word, and the demons flee. And did you notice in Matthew 8, the demons immediately recognized Jesus. They knew who he was. They knew what he could do, and they knew where they were going. Have you come here to torment us before the time?

They know that the final judgment is going to come and that Jesus is the one who commands that judgment. And so they say, have you come here to torment us before the time? And then Jesus speaks, go, and they flee.

He has full authority, and now Matthew 9. It's not an accident. It's not now a next part of the story in the sense of a change of the story. It's the same flow from Matthew because now what do you see?

Sickness and disease, our lives, the physical world, demons, and now Jesus has someone who's paralyzed, can't move. This is at a time, by the way, don't forget. This is at a time where they didn't have the medical advances that we have today, so they didn't know so much in terms of what's wrong.

All they know is there's something wrong, and we can't control this. This is a part of our experience we cannot control. I can control my experience. I can build a business. I can try to make more money.

I can try to do things in my life to change my destiny in a sense from my perspective, but the one thing I can't change, I can't change the sickness and disease, and I can't make my legs work again. I can't give myself vision again.

I can't hear. I can't give that to my kids. I can't raise my little girl from the dead if she dies. I can't do any of these things. And now here's this paralyzed man, and the story ends with what? Jesus saying to him, my son, your sins are forgiven.

I don't think that I get it. I have to confess that. I have a Bible. I read it as much as I possibly can, but I don't even think I handle it the way that I ought to. I think at times in my own sinfulness and my own finitude as a fallible creature, I think at times I get jaded to the fact that the words of God are sitting on my shelf.

I get jaded to the fact that here's the story about God. These scientists today that are saying there are so many galaxies. We live in one. There are so many galaxies we can't even begin really to understand how big.

We can't even understand the sheer size of our universe. It's so enormous, and they're trying to figure it out and look at it, and they're in awe of it, and I know the God who made it. And beyond that, I know the God who made it has given me his word, and I know this humble God who loved me so much that he gives me this story about this paralyzed man that he heals, and it tells me about his forgiveness.

It tells me just how much he loves someone like me and you. This is God who spins creation. If he were to move out of the picture, all of it would collapse. And so here's, let's look at the setting. Come with me now.

Matthew 9. Again, keep your fingers in Mark 2 and Luke 5. So the setting is this. Jesus has just finished now casting out the demons. Jesus is becoming a bit of a celebrity preacher. Think about it for a moment.

No Twitter, no Facebook, right? No Instagram, no YouTube, no phones, no cell phones, no rotary phones, no walkie-talkies, no mass forms of communication. It's unbelievably difficult to get messages out, especially hundreds of miles away.

And yet, Jesus now is healing people, teaching, preaching. He's doing all this, and his celebrity status is increasing. People know who he is. They want to get to him. The Messiah is finally here. By the way, there were plenty of charlatan con artist Messiah in that time period.

Josephus records it was happening all over the place. But now this seems legit. This guy isn't just talking a good game. Jesus is actually healing people. Did you see how Jesus healed this guy over here?

Did you hear about Jesus taking away this person's death? Did you hear about this person over here? Jesus took away the fever. Jesus gave this guy legs. Word is getting out. Now people are saying, he's here?

Where?

Where's the Messiah? Imagine for a moment, you're waiting for the Messiah. You're waiting for God to put the world right again. You're waiting for God to bring salvation. And you hear that in town, five miles from you, he's at his house.

Would you go? In a heartbeat, would you bring your kids? Would you bring your friends? Would you do everything you could to make sure you could show up? Would you look for people in your church who were sick?

Who were paralyzed? Who couldn't use their legs? Would you bring to Jesus your addicted brother? Your addicted mom? Would you carry them to Jesus? That's what's happening. Word has gotten out by this point now.

Now people know that Jesus has returned back to his home.

Mark 2, 1.

And when he returned to Capernaum, after some days, it was reported that he was at home. Matthew 9, 1. Mark 2, 1. There were huge crowds. Mark 2, 2. And many were gathered together so that there was no more room, not even at the door.

Not even at the door. And he was preaching the word to them. That's powerful. Think about it for a moment now. You've walked this long distance, and now you want to get to see Jesus. And all you know is he's in the house, and there's such a massive crowd that you can't even get into the door.

Everybody wants a piece of Jesus. They're basically climbing over themselves just to see him and just to hear him preach. He was such an effective communicator. People would just sit down and listen to him for hours.

They just wanted to touch him. There's an example in Scripture of a woman hearing a story, sort of a wife's tale in a sense. When the Messiah comes, if you could just touch the end of his cloak, you'll be healed of any sickness.

That was actually a rumor. It wasn't in the Bible. It was a rumor that was kicked around, and this woman with this blood disease actually does that. There's a large crowd, and she's just reaching through the crowd to get to the bottom of Jesus' coat to touch the edge of it because she heard a story that if that's the Messiah, I'll be healed by touching it, and Jesus heals her because of her faith.

And here's a sense or this moment where all these people are surrounding this home. They're filling the doorway. They're on top of each other in the house. Kids are crying and screaming. It's family integrated.

It's just loud. That's the circumstance that they're in right now. Jesus is hitting celebrity status now as a minister. He was teaching them God's Word, Mark 2 .2. They bring a paralyzed man in carried by four men.

Now, Matthew, Mark, and Luke are the synoptic gospels. Now, not all of them tell how many people were there, but there is an example of exactly how many men were there in Mark 2. Here, let's read it from Mark.

Mark tells us how many were carrying the paralyzed man. In verse 3, and they came bringing to him a paralyzed man carried, watch, by four men. So Mark is the one that gives you the detail of four men.

Now, let's think for a moment about this paralyzed man. It doesn't tell us specifically how he was paralyzed, but we know that they came carrying him on a bed. So here's what you know. It wasn't one arm.

It wasn't something that we have today where you can get new legs and stuff to walk on. We have so many advances now in technology. It wasn't something he could roll out in a wheelchair. This was a guy who had to depend on people to carry him around.

He had to just lay around on the ground. Can you imagine the bed sores? This is a person probably covered in them. Covered in sores from laying on the ground all the time, dependent completely upon people to carry him from place to place.

Four men carry this man to Jesus. Now, most of us, maybe we look at paralyzed men and we think for a moment, like, that's amazing, but I don't really understand that experience. Some of us do. Some of us have physical handicaps, or we understand exactly what this man was going through.

I remember once I was in Georgetown, Washington, D .C. I just finished practicing karate. My karate studio was right off of M Street, Popular Street, and I went to Ben and Jerry's. It was wintertime. It was ice everywhere.

It was a storm. It was not good conditions to be out.

It was so cold.

It was the kind of cold that cuts you into your bone. Our Canadian friends will understand that kind of cold, okay? That kind of cold where it hurts to be outside, and I remember that it was so bitter and so cold, we, like, rushed into this Ben and Jerry's, not to get ice cream, but to get coffee and tea because it was so cold.

And I looked across the street, and I remember, I'll never forget this. I looked across the street, and I saw the street is empty. Nobody's on the road. Nobody's really driving because it is just treacherous conditions outside.

And I look across the street, and I see this man in a wheelchair bundled up with blankets, and he has stuff covering his head. He's just sitting across the street with his back against a wall in a wheelchair just covered in blankets, and I felt awful for the man.

It was so cold, I couldn't take it, and here's this man by himself in a wheelchair across the street and whether he should not be outside in. So I remember that I felt bad for him, and I bought a hot cup of tea for him, and me and my friend went outside.

We crossed the street, and I walked up to this man. I'm kind of nervous, and I walk up to him to give him this cup of tea, and I go to hand it to him. I said, hey, sir, God bless you. I wanted to give you something hot to drink, and then I realized as soon as I go to hand it to him, as my hand gets close to him, he looks up at me, and I realize that he's not only physically paralyzed.

He has no arms, no legs, and I realize that he's also mentally handicapped. He's sitting out there by himself. I don't know what he's doing there, and I felt so nervous. I go to hand to him this hot tea, and he has no arms to take it, and he can't really understand what I'm saying to him.

He just looked up at me. He sort of mumbled something and smiled, and so I was so nervous. I didn't know what to do. I was only 16 years old. I sat it on top of him, all of his blankets. I sat it on top of him, and I was like, God bless you, and I go to walk away.

Don't judge me. And I walk with my friend about 10 steps, and I turn the corner, and then I realized, how's he going to drink that tea? And so I felt awful and immediately turned back around, and I go to walk, and then he's gone.

And when I say gone, I mean gone, vanished. There's not a store open on that side. I can see all the way down the street for at least a mile and a half. This guy is gone. There was nobody with him. He's gone.

I'm telling you that story because to this day it still perplexes me. I don't really understand what happened to the guy. But it was a moment in my own life when I thought about the healing ministry of Jesus, and here's this man, the most I can do for him is give him a hot cup of tea, and I'm so out of control.

I walked away, and I thought to myself, he can't drink it. I'm out of control. I can't help him. The most I can do is maybe feed him that drink, and here's a situation in the New Testament where Jesus has taken these paralyzed people, and he's giving them legs again and sending them home.

He's got that kind of power. That's the Messiah that you worship. That's the God you serve where we are powerless, where we have no answers, where we can do nothing to help somebody. Jesus can give somebody their eyes back, their hearing back.

He can give people their legs back, but he can do something greater. He can forgive them of their sins, and that's their greater need. It's more important than their legs. It's more important than their eyes and their hearing.

It's the forgiveness of their sins. Paralyzed people are people who need our love, but there's only so much that we can do. Jesus is the one, the only one who can actually do for them what none of us can, and that's give them back their legs.

Now, something I want to point out here is they refused to let embarrassment control them. They knew what Jesus was capable of. Think about it for a moment. People are everywhere. Jesus is busy. He's busy preaching.

He's in the middle of his ministry. He's sort of untouchable in a sense because there's so many people that want to get at him, and here's these guys taking their friend that they love, obviously, carrying him on his bed, and they come to this house to just make sure that Jesus can heal him.

Think for a moment about how you and I respond to Jesus. Do you ever think that Jesus is too busy for you? Be honest with yourself. Do you ever think that Jesus is too busy to care about you? He's busy spinning Saturn and Jupiter.

He's still busy looking at Pluto, which is still a planet. He's still hanging that all together. He's still got us in our orbit around the sun. He's doing that, and then he's got all the world to deal with.

He's got people living, people dying, people being born. He's got people who are hurting right now, people who are rejoicing right now. He's got amazing little creatures in the bottom of the ocean floor that none of us have even seen yet that are entertaining him, that are bringing him glory.

He's so busy, and oftentimes you and I, in the midst of our most broken places where we feel like God is the most faraway, absentee landlord, we feel like we can't approach him because he's too far away.

He's too busy. He's too busy being God. He's too busy ministering to somebody that's more hurt than me. He's too busy rejoicing with those who are before him. Something is keeping me away from Jesus, and here's these guys with a broken and hurting friend.

They don't care that Jesus is in the middle of a message. They don't care that Jesus is surrounded by so many people, and they can't get through the door. They try to figure out ways around the situation.

I know he's busy. I know he's giving a message. I know he doesn't know me personally, hasn't met me, but I know that if this guy touches my friend, he'll be healed. And so what do they do? They trust him.

They believe he's the one. Think about how simple that faith is. We oftentimes as Christians, especially as Reformed folks, we like to get our theological T's crossed and our I's dotted, and we should because theology, what?

Matters. It does matter. What you believe about God affects how you live for the glory of God. It matters a lot, but stop and think for a second. Sometimes we break down faith, and we break down theology so much that we blow it so far out of proportion in terms of what it takes to come to God in faith that we forget these moments where these guys only heard about Jesus, and they knew the story of him being the Messiah.

They knew he could heal, and so what did they do? They believed he was who he says he was. They believed that he could heal their friend, and what did they do? They actually climbed to the top of this house, and they start pulling tiles away.

They're vandals.

They start breaking apart this person's house to crawl down into the house to drop their friend before Jesus. I want you to see it. Go to Luke. You've got to read it to really get how amazing this is.

Luke 5, verses 18 through 19. Here's what the text says. And behold, some men were bringing on a bed a man who was paralyzed, and they were seeking to bring him in and lay him before Jesus. But finding no way to bring him in because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and led him down with his bed through the tiles into the midst before Jesus.

Surprise!

Right? Jesus is in the middle of teaching, right? People are there. They're in awe of what's happening in front of them. People are everywhere. Kids are strewn across the floor, eating crumbs off the floor, coloring, you know, everything else.