New Covenant Forgiveness

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Sermon by Josh Rice from Mark 2:1-13.

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chapter 2 verses 1 through 13. When he entered Capernaum again after some days it was reported that he was at home.
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So many people gathered together that there was no more room not even in the doorway and he was speaking the word to them.
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They came to him bringing a paralytic carried by four of them. Since they were not able to bring him in Jesus because of the crowd they removed this the the roof above him and after digging through it they lowered the man on which the pair of a mat on which the paralytic was lying.
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Seeing their faith Jesus told the paralytic son your sins are forgiven.
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But some of the scribes were sitting there questioning in their hearts. Why does he speak like this?
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He's blaspheming. Who can forgive sins but God alone?
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Right away Jesus perceived in his spirit that they were thinking like this within themselves and he said to them why are you thinking these things in your heart?
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Which is easier to say to the paralytic your sins are forgiven or to say get up take your mat and walk.
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But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins he told the paralytic
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I tell you get up take up your mat and go home. Immediately he got up took the mat and went out in front of everyone.
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As a result they were all astounded and gave glory to God saying we have never seen anything like this.
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Jesus went out again beside the sea the whole crowd was coming to him and he was teaching them.
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God bless the reading of his word. Thank you. I've entitled the sermon this morning
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New Covenant Forgiveness but to put ourselves in a place where we are in the scripture here the new covenant is imminent but not enacted yet when this story comes about in Mark chapter 2 because the new covenant gets ratified through the blood of Christ and as we know that has not happened yet as Jesus's earthly ministry has just begun we see at the start of this chapter the effects of the disobedience of the leper from the last chapter where he was told and he was he was given sincere strict instruction to tell no one what had happened just to get his certificate of health and I say that again because we need to follow these clues and follow this thread that there's something happening with the covenant and it will come into full fruition next week when we talk about wines and wineskins there is something going on beneath the surface and so his disobedience makes it to where Jesus is being followed by mobs of people everywhere he goes and so we find him at the beginning of chapter 2 going home this is probably the
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Simon Peters home in Capernaum and he is swamped with people and at this point it looks like at this point in the ministry that what
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Jesus has done is he has seemingly stopped the healing for a while and he's going about what he is here to do which is to preach the message of the kingdom of God and so as many are listening
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I've entitled this first point true faith results in action and there's something
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I want you to see about the men and the paralytic in this setting where Jesus is teaching in the household and there's crowds of people pressing in the door and they're out in the street and it's causing a ruckus there's no doubt about it and these men have likely heard of the healings that have been going on as Jesus has been casting out demons as he's been healing a leper as this story goes all around to the surrounding area these men have faith and as we would see and as we would know today faith is great okay we can have faith in all kinds of things we can have faith that we're gonna wake up in the morning we can have faith that our that our spouses are gonna love us all that sort of thing we can also have faith in very terrible things right faith is measured by its object as with many of the words that we love in Scripture love is measured by its object if we love murder then that's sinful and terrible but if we love
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Jesus then that is life -giving and so the object of these men's faith is
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Jesus Christ and they've heard of his healings and so they at great personal effort take their paralytic friend who probably can't even speak up onto the roof and they really do an impetuous thing is they destroy personal property to dig through the roof to drop this man down so that he can see
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Jesus Christ interesting thing what I want you to note about this part of the story is that the man in question the man who is going to be healed can't do anything he has no agency in this story whatsoever up to this point he's being carried around on a stretcher or maybe in a bed okay the the synoptics kind of disagree about that word but as he's dropped in then
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Jesus Jesus looks at him okay and he it says that he sees their faith so he looks at these men who have dug through the roof who have destroyed his buddy's house right you can imagine that wouldn't make you very happy if you're sitting in your house and all of a sudden there's a new skylight in there and then you got a sick man being dropped through by four men and now he's in your living room and Jesus looks at them and he sees their faith and then he says something very very interesting indeed and this is carried through all of the
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Gospels Matthew Mark and Luke and he says child your sins are forgiven some would say son the word in the
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Greek when you look between the Gospels what it is implying is there's a familial aspect to this
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Jesus is not related to this man but he is about to adopt him into his family so these men were desperate and they took desperate action and I wonder today with those of us that we we go to church every week that we are
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Christians that we have Christian families that we desire to have a Christian nation and we want Christianity to permeate all around us
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I wonder sometimes that we look out and we doom and gloom and we start to whine and complain but what we often neglect to do is to take action and what these men did was they took action they heard that this man was healing they heard that he was casting out demons and these men nothing was going to stop them they could have seen the crowds and they could have said well not today
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I'm gonna have to wait until the lines a little bit smaller or they could have thought to themselves well maybe we'll catch him when he comes out he's got to come out of that house sometime right maybe we'll catch him then and we can have an encounter no these men were desperate and they took desperate action and I wonder sometimes and I fear sometimes because I feel it in myself that we here in the church sometimes take these holy things for granted and what we do is we forget what has happened here these men have seen the healing and they are desperate for healing and even they at this point don't understand exactly what they're asking for because their eyes are on the physical and the physical is very important but what they do is they embody what
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James says in James 2 26 for just as the body without the spirit is dead so also faith without works is dead so if these men had simply from a house over had said
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I have faith that Jesus Christ can heal you my friend what did their faith do nothing nothing but instead they thought to themselves and they said
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I have faith that Jesus can heal our friend and so we have to go find
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Jesus we have to get in the house with Jesus and so they dig through and I think there's something to that that this gives us this idea of climbing up and shoveling through that nothing's going to stop them and we have to ask ourselves this question when we think about faith and when we think about faith biblically where does faith come from where does faith come from did these men conjure up a desperate faith out of their love of their friend or was this faith given to them by their
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Lord and Creator and I think that we're missing the point if we stop on the physical here and we think to ourselves well they were given faith they had faith because they had heard that Jesus had been healing but I think their faith is given to them in such a way that they don't even quite understand what they're asking because what
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Jesus says in this instance is a revelation of who he is and I think that the man the man who's on the stretcher for sure understands who he is and there's another part of this story the scribes understand who he is the scribes understand who he is and so we start this chapter with great faith the faith that leads to action the faith that leads the digging the faith that leads to desperation trying to find a
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Savior for their friend and so they dig through and as is always the case men if you've been here before women if you've been here before you're gonna know and you're gonna nod with what
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I'm saying when there is true faith that takes action for Jesus Christ there will be opposition and so we find it do you understand that the enemy and the enemies of Christ do not care that we come in here and pray and read scripture they don't care they don't care that in your home you take the
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Bible and you read it every morning and you post your Bible verse with coffee on it on Instagram they don't care they don't care that you worship
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Jesus Christ it doesn't bother them what bothers them is when we take the implications of loving
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Jesus Christ and following Jesus Christ and we take it out into the public square and when we do that there's gonna be opposition and make no mistake
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Jesus Christ in this passage is being provocative he is looking for a fight and he finds one let's look at it verses six and seven you just heard it read some of the scribes were sitting there and reasoning in their hearts why does this man speak that way he is blaspheming who can forgive sins but God alone our first area of conflict when we start trying to live the
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Christian life when the faith that we have in Jesus Christ starts to change what we do and what we think unfortunately sadly and historically the first level of conflict is going to come from the church
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I've been on record many times talking about how our pulpits across the nation tried to stamp down and stop an active faith a faith that gets out and mixes it up in the public square a faith that is conquistorial like the faith of the
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Apostles that from town to town was turning everything upside down and we see just as the case when
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Jesus comes to a dead Israel in the first century and he starts preaching the good news of the kingdom the reaction of the religious elite in the city and in every town is to try to stop this message and try to stop the trouble that it's causing as it's being preached these men these scribes they know what they're talking about they know what they're talking about and I'm going to posit that the reason that they act the way they do is because they are vessels of destruction they are vessels of wrath and they have a piece of the oracles of God they have teaching and learning but they don't have faith and when we don't have faith all the
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Christian ease and all the things that we know about God do not serve to bless us they serve to condemn us and so what the scribes do in this chapter is they start a trajectory through Mark of increasing enmity against Jesus Christ and what we're going to see is what starts with maybe an academic argument and an accusal of blasphemy becomes a charge of blasphemy that leads to malicious men desiring the blood of an innocent man their feet are swift to go shed blood don't miss it in this context we have a man we have a contrast we have a paralytic on a stretcher who can't move who likely can't speak and we have his four faithful friends who are going to all the trouble for themselves to drop him down and we have religious scribes who are concerned about the power that's about to be displayed and they hate it they hate it but all the people around are gobsmacked the scripture tells us they've never seen anything like this before so we're gonna look that I get ahead of myself what is it that he saw that they've never seen before here's what the scribes do you have to understand this they rightly say that only
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God can forgive sins that is a theological truism I cannot forgive your sins and if I say that I can forgive your sins you should run out of here never come back and tell everyone that Josh Rice is a false teacher and that he probably has some kind of cult like God complex that is not something that I have the power to do but they also have a misunderstanding about how sins are forgiven and had always been forgiven because Jesus does not offer a new kind of forgiveness he offers a new contract of forgiveness that is not ratified yet and just like last week when he tells the leper to go get his health certificate in accordance with the
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Old Covenant he is forgiving in accordance with the Old Covenant here knowing that all forgiveness given to all the people of God forever was based on God's grace and on the impending ratification of forgiveness of sins through the blood of Christ Abraham Moses David Jonathan Jacob Isaiah Isaac Jeremiah every single person every single person we read about in the
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Old Testament was forgiven of their sins the same way that we are forgiven of our sins and that is by the grace of an
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Almighty Father and what they did was they looked forward covenantally to the ratification when
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God would come to live among his people and that would only come we know through Hebrews that the blood of bulls does not take away sin but it is a forbearance of God that God looked back in history and he waited and Romans 3 tells us that he had forbearance the sins of old that he was patiently waiting for his son to come on the scene so that his son
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Jesus Christ would be both the just and the justifier he's the just because he forgives sins he's the justifier because he makes it just to forgive sins because the penalty was paid these scribes have totally missed it because what they think is that forgiveness came through the sacrificial system they had forgotten what the
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Prophet Isaiah wrote through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in Isaiah 1 11 through 15
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Isaiah wrote hear the word of Yahweh you rulers of Sodom this is talking to the Israelites do you think the
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Israelites like to be called rulers of Sodom no I don't think so give ear to the law of our
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God you people of Gomorrah what are your multiplied sacrifices to me says
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Yahweh I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed cattle and in the blood of bulls lambs or goats
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I take no pleasure when you come to appear before me who requires of you this trampling of my courts bring your worthless offerings no longer incense is an abomination to me new moon and Sabbath the calling of convocation
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I cannot endure wickedness in the solemn assembly my soul hates your new moon festivals and your appointed times they have become a burden to me
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I am weary of bearing them so when you spread out your hands in prayer
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I will hide my eyes from you indeed even though you multiply prayers I will not listen your hands are full of blood and as many of the religious for all time have thought we look at a passage like that and just like the scribes looked at the passage like that and they say yeah those people are sick they're so sick out there it's a good thing
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I'm not like that they would have heard that scripture and they would have thought we are of Abraham and they would say this over and over we are the children of Abraham we are the sons of Abraham the sons of the promise we are not from Sodom and Gomorrah we're not like those perverts we are following the law look back at Isaiah did
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God not tell them to offer the blood of bulls did he not tell them to wave the incense around the
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Holy of Holies so that a smell pleasing to God would rise up to him of course he told them that but forgiveness was always the same way forgiveness did not come from the blood of bulls forgiveness came from the mercy of God and he in his forbearance gave a system of obedience because what thrills
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God what pleases God is obedience he is our father is he not and I know with my children what pleases a father is obedience what's a blessing to a father obedience if you love if you say that you love and you're a rebel disobedient person then you show no love and so if you disobey and then say but Lord I killed a sheep
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God says I don't care about your sheep it was never about the blood of bulls it was never about turtle doves it was never about incense it was always about the heart of man and the faith that is given by the
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Holy Spirit that causes a man to then love God's law to love
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God himself remember direct object so the scribes hear all this and they're seeing what's going on and they rightly say only
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God can forgive sins but what have they done they have kept the temple sacrifices but we also know that they have perverted justice and they have put heavy burdens and oppression on the people the people of Israel are sick they don't know whether they're saved or not because the onus of all of these traditions the tradition of Korah all of this stuff has been laid on them and they don't know which way they're going it's like being on a theological religious treadmill where I don't know if I'm good enough today have
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I offered enough sacrifices and that was never it that was never never it we also know as I've alluded to earlier that these scribes that their hands desire to shed blood they are on this path did you know that forgiveness never changed
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I don't say that out of my own opinion listen to the pen of David through the Holy Spirit and what is
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I don't know it's top three for me I come back to this well so often and you've heard it so often
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Psalm 51 15 through 17 Oh Lord open my lips that my mouth may declare your praise for you do not delight in sacrifice otherwise
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I would give it you were not pleased with burnt offering the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit a broken and a contrite heart
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Oh God you will not despise does that sound like the same way that we're forgiven today this was written a thousand years before our
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Lord walked in Mark chapter 2 the heart of God has never changed
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James would also tell us that there is no shadow due to variation with God he does not change he has not changed he will not change he is
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Alpha and Omega he was the same at the very beginning for us which is not the beginning for him he has no beginning and he will be the same at the end
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God never changes and these scribes are blind to what is right in front of them and there is a damning sign in this passage
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I hope that you see it it's not the healing there's a damning sign let's pick it up Jesus was aware in his spirit verse 8 that they were reasoning that way he gives them a sign does he not he knows what they're considering they've not spoken just like the paralytic man remember
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Jesus looks at the paralyzed man the four men drop him through the roof because they want him to have healing but Jesus understands and Jesus knows because he's
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God there is a healing that's far greater than healing his limbs that healing is that he needs forgiveness of sins and can
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Jesus simply declare forgiveness of sins that's the issue that's in contention today can
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Jesus simply declare it who can do that who can simply declare forgiveness because forgiveness is absent of works is it not and to forgive is to take pain to forgive your friend who has sinned against you is to take on a painful cost on yourself and to tell your friend
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I hold you not responsible anymore I'm gonna take care of all the damage even though you sinned
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I'm gonna bear it and I love you still you're forgiven that is not a natural thought of man man is all about wages man is all about payback man is all about restitution or if we're extremely wicked retribution that's what we want we want things to be even and we think in our arrogance that we want things to be even with God and God's economy doesn't work that way because created man can never be even with God we can never work ourselves into the position where God owes us forgiveness or salvation for the good works we've done because God himself ordained and caused the good works that we'd like to offer up to him and see see
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God and God goes yeah I did that that was me I gave you the heart
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I gave you the opportunity so Jesus knows that they are reasoning and then he says something that is astounding
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I hope you don't miss it it's astounding he says but so you may know that the
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Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins okay the scribes
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I don't know if you know but the scribes knew exactly what he was talking about here and this is this is a crazy thing because Jesus is doing two things and I don't want to miss we one of them is easy if you know the text the other one's a little bit more subtle so there's there's two ways that the
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Son of Man is used in the writings that these scribes would know about one of them is in Ezekiel where Ezekiel is called the
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Son of Man to go deliver these prophecies and that is emphasizing to Ezekiel who probably saw the craziest stuff that was seen by anybody in the
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Old Testament if you want like look if you want to take a trip read Ezekiel in the next few weeks all right and the first thing you'll think is
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I don't understand what's going on here right and the second thing you'll think is man I'm glad that God did not call me to be like Ezekiel okay because that would be terrible but Ezekiel is called the
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Son of Man and that what that does is it emphasizes with all the glorious things that Ezekiel is going to see and that he's going to write and he's going to talk about it emphasizes that Ezekiel is a man he's a man he's a son of man he is not divine he's not an angel he's a man and so when
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Jesus declares himself to be the Son of Man that is a part of what he means and that part is extremely important because without him being a man there is no ratification of forgiveness for our sins if Jesus is not a man then any work that he does does nothing to forgive sins and what he's doing here is lying because all forgiveness depends on the ratification of the covenant that God gave through the pen of Ezekiel and through the pen of Jeremiah which was going to be that there was going to be a new kind of covenant with no fault in it and it was going to be given by the blood of the
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Messiah but that Messiah had to be a man and so Jesus does emphasize why does he keep saying Son of Man well that's one reason because he is the
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Son of Man and as the Son of Man as the son of Adam you might read it he's the son of man who owns the crown of the world of the earth let's not get metaphysical and ethereal here he is the king of the earth and all of its people don't believe me let's look at this new claim and this is what the scribes would have seen immediately
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Daniel 7 13 and 14 this is Daniel looking in the night visions it says and behold with the clouds of heaven one like a son of man was coming and he came up to the ancient of days and came near before him and to him was given dominion glory and a kingdom that all the people's nations and men of every tongue might serve him his dominion is an everlasting dominion which will not be taken away and his kingdom is one which will not be destroyed there's so many threads in here right this is the kingship of David that is the
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Davidic covenant that there would be a throne established that would never be destroyed Jesus is the son of man the son of David who comes to take this dominion in this throne that's never going to be destroyed it's an everlasting throne and what are the what are the limits of this throne there is no limit he's given dominion over everything he's given dominion over every person every person who professes faith in Christ is under the dominion of Christ every person who blasphemes with their mouth and says that Christ is not
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God that there is no God or that Buddha has got everything every one of those professions those people are under the dominion of Jesus Christ because his throne has no bounds he is the only one that is like this he is the only one who has the claim and when he says when he says that the
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Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins the scribes know exactly what he's referencing and what he's talking about they for sure know this the people outside the door
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I think probably don't know that but the scribes know it and so then we come to the point of contention right they come to the point of contention what do the scribes do with this information all right
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I've got knives sharpened here so be ready us inside those of us
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I claim to be one of them who are inside what we call reformed Christendom we too often think just like the scribes and what we think is that we have this doctrine and we would know we know just like the scribes did that when
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Jesus says the Son of Man that he is calling himself this King who is in Daniel's vision understand let me backtrack a second put the knife away all right so in Daniel's vision here's the thing
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Daniel put a clock on when the Messiah was going to come and so everyone who was looking for the redemption of Israel and that would be all the religious elite because they are under the foot of Rome right and Daniel had prophesied that the run that Rome would come and be this huge Empire and that there would be a stone not cut with human hands that would hurdle into this statue and blow up and disperse this oppressive
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Empire and he had even put a time period on it of weeks which were bundles of seven years and so to the year everyone who is looking knew what was coming on the scene right now this is a pregnant time in history where Daniel had prophesied that the
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Messiah was going to come and so there's people looking for him right when this is written right when this is happening and so they know that and when a man comes on the scene and he's healing people and casting out demons and now he calls himself the
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Son of Man according to what Daniel said the scribes understand this guy is claiming to be
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God he's claiming to be the Messiah and he is bringing healing in his wings as was prophesied and he's casting out demons and the poor and oppressed are leaking what leaping like calves in the stall all these signs are happening don't miss it there's an important thing happening here and us back to the knives us in the reform camp will often look at this and we'll go yeah we know all that we've got all these doctrines finally tuned in and then what we do is we are confronted with our knowledge of Scripture and we are confronted with our peerless doctrine and then we go out and we hate our brother and we look out at the other churches and we look out at people that may be a more a little bit more difficult for us to love and inside our hearts we think man
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I wish they knew as much as we do because they're really stupid out there that's what we do and it reeks of the scribes
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I am NOT disparaging reform doctrine I believe it all the way down to my toes I think it's beautiful I love it but people who have faith in Jesus Christ and people who have been forgiven by his declaration that he has all the authority to declare those people then do what he says and what he told us to do first is to love
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God with all of our hearts with all of our souls with all of our strength with all of our mind and to love our neighbor as ourself and our neighbor is not an ethereal charge our neighbor is the people that we are around on a daily basis anyone we come in contact with is our neighbor and we love them by obeying the commands of God on their behalf not by hating them so Jesus has brought condemnation on these scribes it's a dangerous place that they're in and they're so calloused are they not what would you do what would you do if a man who says for someone sins to be forgiven and you're thinking to yourself how can he do that and he walks up to you and he says why are you reasoning this in your heart would you be stopped in your tracks a little bit
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I would tell you is one who has faith in Christ you would be stopped in your tracks but to one who
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Christ represents a threat to your establishment and your very way of living what you do is you double down and you push that truth down deep and you suppress it and that's what they want to do so how does he show the sign he says so that you may know that the
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Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins I say to you get up pick up your mat and go to your home and immediately the man gets up picks up his mat and goes home can you imagine standing in that crowded street can you imagine looking in the doorway of that house can you imagine being one of the four friends who they had faith but they had to have doubt didn't they as they're crawling through that roof boy we hope we really hope and Jesus says this thing and this man is forgiven and what this man walks away with he's not merely healed he is forgiven of his sins and so the scribes had this other twisted thing going right the other twisted thing is the reason this man is paralyzed is because he's a tremendous sinner so in there in their worldview in their idea this man would have had to be forgiven for his sins to he healed it's so twisted isn't it it's twisted up you have to be forgiven to be healed we've put you on the outcast of society because you're a sinner we who hold the key to this court way to offer the sacrifices on your behalf we've pushed you out you don't get to come in here and now when someone does come in and says you're forgiven of your sins we want to pick up stones to throw stones at him as a blasphemer do you get the hopelessness of the religiosity of this first century situation in Israel it's hopeless and what happens the man picks up his mat and he went out before everyone there's something interesting here
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I've entitled this last part faith forgiveness and the fear of God I just asked the question has forgiveness given you a healthy fear of God because I think it should
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I think it should we often think of forgiveness is an ooey -gooey feeling like oh man
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I'm so happy that my sins are not held against me more that's really good that is true but the other thing is we don't go one step further and we don't think like the scribes ask we don't think so so if God can forgive me of my sins what does that mean about the power of God if God can see every thought that I've ever had if he can weigh every word that's ever come out of my mouth that's a high standard is it not and if he looks at that and he forgives me anyway
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I think we have questions to ask about God and so this man as he is forgiven of his sins and he picks up his mat and he goes out before everyone
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Matthew would tell us that the people were afraid this word it's it's not it's not great for us it's hard for us to translate it that's translated into astonished or amazed the idea would really be something like gobsmacked they don't know what to say and they don't know what to think
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Jesus has given this sign and anyone who was reasonable anyone who had any eyes to see it all would see that this man said that he could forgive sins and then he said
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I forgive you take up your mat and walk and the man gets up and walks so the scribes not just get totally exposed for being wrong about everything yeah
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I think so because what should have happened here was that everyone sees oh this is the
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Son of Man who is going to ascend to the Ancient of Days but let me give you some hope friends because that's not often that's not often the way that faith works in people and there may be some in here this morning who hear this and they think man that's an interesting story and sometimes faith comes from hearing these things and hearing it over time and I think these people see it and they're not unbelievers right now there's uncomfortable things for us ahead and mark where the people ask
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Jesus why do you talk this way in parables or riddles and Jesus says because if I spoke plainly they would all believe in me and we think why don't you want them all to believe in you
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I don't have to deal with that today today
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I'm gonna deal with this right today I'm gonna deal with this that these people see the sign and I think this paralyzed man came into the kingdom on this day
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I do and I think his four friends came into the kingdom on this day but I think that the masses who are gathering don't really know what to do with this and they're not in unbelief but they don't really believe yet either and so there's crowds of people following Jesus around and Jesus knows the hearts of every single one of them and he's ministering and he's preaching but I want you to say later on later on the the mantra of the scribes and the
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Pharisees is gonna be that this man is the son of Beelzebub right that he's of the house of Satan what a ridiculous thing because what is the result of this healing it's right there isn't it they were glorifying
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God so the healing of the paralytic the healing and the teaching of Christ leads to the people glorifying
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God and everyone's following him around and he's teaching them and I would say on the positive side the optimist in me the the post -millennial to me would say that as he's teaching them more and more are coming to faith yay that's a good thing but then the realistic other side of me that may be kind of warring on millennial side of me would kind of look at something and they would say and I would say yeah he was also filling up the wrath of God for all of these people because as he was teaching them they're hearing and they're seeing the
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Son of Man they're seeing this God and this Creator and as they walk away unchanged and if their supposed faith has no action and no works and it's a dead faith it's like a husk of corn with no corn inside of it it's empty when you see something like that they are full with more condemnation and their encounter with Jesus left them worse off than they started don't let that be you this morning you've read this you're hearing it you're hearing the prayers you're seeing the old songs of the
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Saints and if you walk away in unbelief this has been terrible for you today terrible you would have been better off if you'd never been here it's better off to never play the
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Jesus game than to play it for a while and jump off the ride there's no way back for you when you do that Hebrews is clear in multiple places about that doctrine and look
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I don't get to look into the hearts of man because I don't know what I do as a preacher of the Gospels I preach the gospel of repentance to everyone and I tell you that today salvation is here and that God can rightly and truly forgive sins because he has provided the way and he has provided the grace we see over and over and acts as the
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Apostles are healing that the object is Jesus they will not take worship for themselves they will not take honor for themselves they will point it all back to Christ over and over again this stuff had not happened before what did the people never see they hadn't seen people teaching with authority remember back a couple of weeks right a couple of weeks in chapter 1 that it says they were amazed in the synagogue because Jesus taught as one with authority now
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I have to imagine this made the scribes mad too right because this guy comes in and he starts teaching and all the people are going we've never heard anything like this before and the scribes are like we're teaching you all the time well yeah because you have a dead religion and Jesus is the living waters that's what he offers
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Jesus was casting out demons he was making war on that ancient enemy the one who had ensnared
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Adam in the garden Jesus is making war and he goes out into the wilderness and desolation and he refuses to fall to the temptation of the serpent and then he keeps going into desolation and it's almost like advancing on the enemy over and over again he goes in these towns he teaches then he goes out in the desolate places and he prays to God and what he's doing is he is declaring his kingship everywhere because he is the first he is this herald right he's come on he's the herald of a new thing
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Jesus healed immediately not like Benny Hinn where you're bringing people in and he's knocking him down but listen don't miss this
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Benny Hinn is rich is he not are they're not crowds of people who come because they lack the hope they want to see healing they want to see something real but the healing of the kingdom is not parlor games and leg lengthening tricks the healing of the kingdom is complete immediate and miraculous because Jesus is not like a doctor
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Jesus is the inventor of medicine Jesus wrote the natural systems into being and he holds all of that knowledge in his hand and as he through his grace reveals more and more knowledge to us it's just a revelation of what
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Jesus already knew and the reason he knew it is because he wrote it and the reason that Jesus could forgive and because he was right and not offering the sacrifice is because Jesus wrote the very rules about the sacrifice did you know that you look back in Leviticus Jesus wrote that you look back to the blood of bulls and in Exodus Jesus wrote that does he have the authority yes he's the only one who has the authority and so in this passage what
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I want us to see is that this is the king he declares his kingship he is showing something about himself in this passage and this is all going to add up to a period of outpouring the people of Israel had 400 years of silence it was a dry desolate place spiritually
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I would argue in America that we've had great blessing spiritually over time but let's be real friends we have been in a dry desert of faith in action in America for my whole life a dry desert and I hope that we're seeing some first fruits of something happening as people want to put their faith in action but we know that back in this time the religious activity from the leaders was doing nothing because it moved nothing it changed nothing and the only thing their activity did was solidify their own riches in their own power we have to run from supposed men of God who used the
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Word of God and you use the teaching in a sacred way to enrich themselves and to build up high towers so that no one can ascend to their level that is devilish teaching
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Jesus was a man among the people he is the Great Shepherd is he not and those of us who claim to be under shepherds those of us who love
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Christ we have to be a man of the people we have to be among people and we have to show how that faith works we can't have that sort of religious activity is the worship of God to be a dry thing or is it to be as Spurgeon said the romance of all romances that's not in a weird
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Valentine's sort of way but it is this if this is a dry thing to come into the house of God with a gathering of his people and to sing the songs and to hear this preach is not a thrill to your heart
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I think we should examine and test and find the roots of the sin and unbelief that have choked out the amazing glory of Jesus Christ do you think anyone who saw this happen that day besides the scribes anyone who saw it do you think that they were like oh
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I wonder if that really happened no they were not in doubt they were not undecided they were amazed at what they had seen and friends we have a greater thing than that do you understand this we have a greater thing than they had we have the living
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Christ today he has ascended to the ancient of days he has ascended and he did it with healing in his wings and he has conquered sin and death forever they have no power here none you need to hear that Christian you who get ensnared by sins and you wonder when a
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Lord is this going to be taken away by the power of Christ it already is taken away we're just walking it out over time and do you know the reason we're walking it out over time is so that we will know with perfect clarity at the end of our struggle with that sin that is so grasping at you right now when that sin is finally put away you're gonna understand he did it not me did the paralytic man have anything to do with his healing no he was laying in a bed we have nothing to do with our forgiveness it is a gift of God and it flows out of his justice because his sacrifice was so great as to withhold forgiveness from one who confesses to him would be unjust and may it never be said that God is unjust he is perfectly righteous and there is forgiveness today for you it's a misunderstood concept in Christian today we are enslaved by our sins because we are arrogant and thinking that God will not forgive us our sins or forgive them all the way he has and he will and he will continue to because he promised it so go to him in prayer and understand your prayers are not magical in the incantations they are confessions and the whole