Take up your mat (Part 1)

Thanks for tuning in to No Compromise Radio with pastor and author, Dr. Mike Avendroff. Today on No Compromise Radio, we'll be hearing Pastor Mike open the Word of God in a recent message he preached at Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts.

Now let's join Pastor Mike in progress as he preaches through the Scriptures verse by verse with No Compromise.

Christ Attested by Signs and Wonders

How did you know Jesus was who he was? Lots of reasons epitomized by the resurrection, but while he was on earth he did signs and wonders and as Peter said in Acts 2 .22, he was a man attested by God to you by doing signs and wonders and miracles.

So we're going to look at Matthew chapter 9, 1 to 13 and we're going to have a variety of other passages woven in to this. For instance, Matthew, Mark, and Luke are called what kind of gospels? Synoptic gospels and if you think of the word similar, you'll get synoptic.

That is to say, they're all very close in the way they're portraying Christ, different than John, but Matthew, Mark, and Luke are synoptic and so I'll have a little bit of Mark bleed in and a little bit of Luke come to light.

Typically Mark's shortest, but now Mark is the longest passage, but we're going to go into Matthew 9 where Jesus is portrayed as the King. You think of Matthew, big picture, you say Jesus is the Messiah King.

Somebody should write a book on that topic by the way, that would be a great selling book in the mind of the author at least. Everything about this book speaks King. Kings have genealogies, there's a genealogy, right?

There's all kinds of stuff going on behind the scenes where other people who aren't the King try to kill the baby King. That's actually happening here too. The King goes and tells his manifesto on a mountain and says, this is what I require for entrance into my kingdom, Sermon on the Mount, chapters 5 through 7.

And then to show you that the King has power, Matthew arranges chapter 8, 9, and 10 topically to show you demonstrations of the power of God that only the King would have. So 8, 9, and 10 are arranged topically, but they're also arranged in this progressive fashion where every miracle builds upon the next and you just think, there's nobody like this, he has to be the Son of Man, he has to be the King of the universe.

It's a fast paced story, it's one that you should probably know about, but fasten your seatbelts nonetheless and let's look at Matthew chapter 9. The first round as he fights the false teachers is found in verses 1 through 8, and then round 2 will be found in verses 9 through 13.

So if you're looking for an outline, I'm just going to use round 1 and round 2, or you could talk about forgiveness 1 and forgiveness 2, however you'd like to do it. Matthew chapter 9, verse 1, and getting into a boat, he crossed over and came to his own city.

The Paralyzed Man and the Forgiveness of Sins

So of course we're talking about the Sea of Galilee and now he goes to his own city, and the city of his is Capernaum, that's his headquarters, that's home base, that's mission control center in this little town on the north side of the Sea of Galilee, Capernaum, that's base camp for his ministry, and most likely it's Peter's home, mother-in-law's home, and Mark says it was noise that he was in the house.

People were talking about it because wherever Jesus went, he healed and taught and then there was the scuttle and then there was the talk. If you go back to chapter 8 with me, to verse 1, I want you to see what he's done because everywhere he would go, he would compassionately heal people and preach.

Chapter 8, verse 1, he came down from the mountain, great crowds followed him, behold a leper came to him and knelt before him saying, Lord, if you will, you can make me clean. Obviously you have the power, God, to do it, but if you will, and Jesus stretched out his hand and did something that people wouldn't do to lepers and touched him saying, I will be clean, and immediately his leprosy was cleansed.

Then if you go to chapter 8, verses 5 and following, verse 6 it says, there was a servant that was paralyzed at home, suffering terribly. And what did Jesus do? Jesus healed that man. Verse 14, and when Jesus entered Peter's house, he saw his mother-in-law lying sick with a fever and he touched her and the fever left.

Then in chapter 8, verse 23, the storm is calmed. Chapter 8, verse 28, he heals men with demons and now we come to chapter 9. Crowds here, crowds understand, crowds crowd around Jesus. They want to go where Jesus goes.

Some for the right reasons and a lot of false teachers, they'll follow too. Wherever you see Jesus, you'll see the crowds and you'll see the false teachers. So he got in a boat and went over to his own city.

Mark says, many people were gathered together so there was no longer room, even near the door and he was speaking the word to them. So Mark gives us extra information. It's crowded inside and it's crowded by the door and what was Jesus in there doing?

Now he'd just been healing a lot of people and now he's preaching to them. How's that for a good home group? Jesus preaching. What does this verse mean to you, Jesus said to the crowd in the home? Well not quite.

What was he talking about? Well we don't know exactly, but I think, and I'll tell you why I think this in a moment, I think he was talking about salvation, forgiveness, reconciliation, how to be right with God, your creator, who's a judge, but thankfully is also a savior.

Now there weren't security guards back in those days and wrought iron fences. People were just jammed in there. And the Eastern culture, the Oriental culture basically said this, you can invite yourself to people's houses.

As a matter of fact, some of you come from Eastern culture and I know because you've told me, I can come to your house any time I would like. It's fascinating. People thought I was from the East when I first got here 15 years ago because probably three times a day people from Bethlehem Bible Church, our Baptist church at the time, would show up at my house and say, hi, how are you pastor?

It was a fascinating time, making sure I was doing the right thing. Many were gathered, scribes were there, and Luke says some Pharisees and teachers of the law sitting there who had come from every village in the Galilee and Judea and Jerusalem.

So now they're following Jesus. The big shots come and they want to see what he's doing. And of course, they don't want to praise God for what he's doing. They want to try to find a crack in his armor so they can discredit him.

The religious leaders come from far away. And now here's this house. Just imagine all the people and all the sweat and all the dust and all the noise. In our day, you would look up and probably see a helicopter and all kinds of people taking pictures because this was the major happening.

Mark says there's no longer room even near the door. No privacy inside, no privacy on the outside. And Jesus is preaching to them. By the way, Mark says it was an ongoing sermon, in perfect tense, preaching and preaching and preaching and preaching.

Certainly, we've learned before that there are more important things than physical healing. Why? Because you can be physically healed and still not go to heaven. So Jesus is preaching to them. Verse 2, look at your text in Matthew chapter 9.

Behold, some people brought to him a paralytic lying on a bed. Matthew likes to use that word, behold. He's trying to say to you, just take a look. Just imagine you're there. So all the dust and all the noise and all the people and behold, just imagine there's a paralytic being brought by people.

Another gospel tells us, carried by four men. Mark 2, verse 4 says, and being unable to get to him because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him. And when they had dug an opening, they let down the pallet on which the paralytic was lying.

Luke says they couldn't find a way to get in. How do you carry some pallet with a man? It's like carrying a casket, practically, through the door, through all the people. There's too many people. They can't get out of the way.

They were determined, though, to get Jesus' attention by bringing this man in. Where there's a will, there's a first congregation, first service. They said, all said, way. They were very kind. But it's not right.

It's more where there's faith, it will persevere. And they weren't going to stop. They had to get Jesus in, excuse me, they had to get him into Jesus. And so what did they do? Well, you can't get in through the door.

So let's dig through the roof. Now, how do you get up to the roof? Well, back in those days, by the way, they were flat roofs and they would be house by house by house by house. Isaiah 5, Isaiah blasts them saying, you're building house by house by house.

So they probably went to somebody else's house, got up on the roof, and then now come over to the townhouse that is Peter's. Flat roof. And they removed the roof and dug an opening. Now, if you are a contractor, these roofs back in those days had five layers, wooden supporting beams, stone slabs that were like tiles, reeds and branches is the next layer, thatch to get rid of the rain.

And then at the very top, what would you put on the top? You'd put soil, you'd put sod on the top, would last for the year. You'd have about two feet thick of a roof. I don't know how they pick the exact spot right above Jesus, but they did.

Now let's move from the outside of the house to the inside of the house. By the way, just for a second, what if we could start hearing noises on the roof right now? What would we do? You would try not to be rude.

You would try to look straight at me. And then you're like, but yeah, something's going on right there. Pretty soon the tile starts falling down. Pretty soon that chandelier falls down. Pretty soon we all, and finally I just say to you, go ahead and look.

This is in the middle of Christ's teaching. Maybe you'd hear the footsteps on top of the roof, then a little bit of shoveling. Mark says they were actually scooping, that was going on. Then the dirt starts flying, huge hole, you can see the sun if you look up.

Poor Peter, if this is either his house or his mother-in-law's house, you're thinking, there's my project, that's the to-do list after this is all done. It's got to be big enough to get the paralytic in too, because you can't, if it's like this, the paralytic is laying on some kind of bed, you can't just make a small opening and just dive bomb him in and slowly lower that down.

I said to the first service folks, so I'll say it to you. Side note, not related, not exegetically driven authorial intent. But what does this do, by the way, to your open door theology that you use? Well, there's an open door, I might as well go through it.

There's a closed door, God doesn't want me to do that. Friends, open doors simply mean open doors and closed doors simply mean closed doors. There's an open door, hmm, maybe I should go through it. Maybe wisdom says, don't go.

Closed door, hmm, maybe I shouldn't go through it. Maybe I should dig through it. So we have to be very careful when it comes to open door, closed doors. It's not a good way to make decisions, we want to use our minds.

Verse two, it says, it goes on to say, and when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, take heart, my son. I mean, he saw their faith. Now, Jesus can see invisible things because he's the omniscient God.

And Jesus can also see their faith because faith, what? Works. They obviously believe because they're digging, they got on the roof and now they're digging the hole. So either one is fine by me or both.

He sees their invisible faith, or he sees the effect of their faith. And I bet this man, who is the paralytic, also had faith, because you would have to have faith to let these four guys do that. And Jesus said, take heart, my son.

Healed in chapter eight, healed in chapter eight, healed in chapter eight, healed in chapter eight. And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, take heart, my son. You're healed from your paralyzation.

That's what they were expecting. That's what everybody would think. That's what you would think if you read chapter eight. And what does he say? Take heart, my son, your sins are forgiven. That's surprising.

I think that's why Jesus was preaching on forgiveness in the house. Certainly, he would regularly talk about forgiveness. But now Jesus is preaching on forgiveness. He knows all this is going on, because he's ordained it all.

And now in the middle of his message on forgiveness, Jesus has a perfect object illustration for forgiveness. This is a wanna-counsel time on steroids. Your sins are forgiven. Now, our ushers probably would have done the opposite.

They probably would have saw that going down, and they would have said, this is inappropriate, this is wrong, we're going to escort you out, there's a right thing to do here. And they would have rebuked them.

Perfect knowledge of Jesus, he knows it's going to happen, and then he pronounces, do you notice the text, singular or plural sins? Your sins are forgiven. My son, tenderly, gently, compassionately, Luke said Jesus called him friend.

Your sins are forgiven now, not later, not through purgatory, not through an indulgence. Your sins are forgiven now. Can you imagine God proclaiming, your sins are forgiven? Certainly based on Christ's death, in anticipation of that, but now God says your sins are forgiven.

By the way, congregation, if you could have anybody in the world or universe just look at you and say, all your sins are forgiven. You'd want to hear that from God, wouldn't you? And that's exactly what we have in Christ Jesus.

Every one of our sins forgiven. The deepest need that this man had was not better health, was not more money, was not a better job, a wife and kids. The deepest need was he needed forgiveness from his sins.

And actually the Greek is, forgiveness passive. That means it has to be done to you. You can't forgive yourself. You can't have other people forgive you. Ultimately, for sins against God, it has to be granted from God by divine sovereign initiative.

I looked up, I found six Hebrew words for sin, missing the mark, breaching relationship, perverseness, error, godlessness, mischief. I found six Greek words for sin, offense, lapse, unrighteous deeds, transgression of the law, godlessness, and lawlessness.

And it's like Jesus takes those 12 words, Hebrew and Greek, balls them all up and says, every sin you've ever committed, you're forgiven. Every standard that you've broken against me, forgiven. Could not be a better word in all the Bible.

And the Greek word means to just dismiss or to release, casting all his sins behind God's back. Ephesians 1 says, in him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses. Colossians 1, he delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

Colossians 2 says, and when you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, he made you alive together with him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, and which was hostile to us.

He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. Jesus didn't say, you just have a syndrome, you got an illness, you got a disease, you got to have some kind of disorder, you got to feel better about yourself, forget your guilt, you deserve better, look into your inner self, look at your inner child, where you spanked as a kid.

I remember in seminary, in theological education, they would always say this. If someone comes in your office and says, I'm a filthy, rotten, horrible sinner, you are to never say, no, you're not. But in our society, that's what you feel like you want to say.

Someone comes in and says, I'm a wretch of a man or a woman. I'm filthy, I'm disgusted with myself, and I am just unclean. You're never to say to them, no, you're okay. You know what you're supposed to say?

Well, there's a Savior greater than your filthiness. There's a Messiah who's more wonderful than you are sin. Because people, when convicted, they need to feel the guilt, so then they try to get out of that guilt through the only atoning sacrifice that's available to them, Christ Jesus.

This man was a sinner, and Jesus said, your sins are forgiven. Now, when you're at a baptism service here, or you have a friend call you, did you know so and so got saved? What do you usually think? Hey, great, they got saved.

They don't have to go to hell. God's still saving people, and you think, yes. How do you think the scribes reacted to this situation here? Verse three, and behold, see that kind of language again? Just put yourself there, it's vivid language.

And behold, some of the scribes, these theological scribes, said to themselves, this man is blaspheming. The text elsewhere says they were seated. Why would they be seated and all these people around?

Because they get honor, and so they say, you know what? This man's blaspheming. Certainly, they're jealous, and with a contempt, they say he's blaspheming. He's speaking irreverently. Why is he speaking irreverently?

Why is he speaking impiously? Because only God can forgive sin. Jesus is calling himself God. That's divine prerogative only. Isaiah 43, I, even I, am the one who wipes out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.

Only God can ultimately forgive sins, because only God can ultimately pay for our sins, provide salvation. Jesus is God. People say, well, Jesus isn't God. Friends, there are about 30 ways for me to approach this, but let's just approach it this text.

No one can forgive sins against God except God. Jesus is God. He does only what God does. Verse 4, I'll show you something else that God does, is reads people's minds. But Jesus, knowing their thoughts, said, why do you think evil in your hearts?

This isn't intuition, friends. This is divine knowledge. Can you imagine? What if you could think of everything that everyone was thinking right now simultaneously in this room? I mean, I could just hear the chatter, cha, cha, cha, cha, cha, cha, cha, cha, all the da, da, da, da.

Drive me crazy after 10 seconds. The noise, stop it. Now just imagine, 6 .8 billion people. God knows exactly what they're thinking and can have it all in his mind because he's eternal and omniscient.

And he knows what these people are thinking. He knows all their thoughts. Why are you thinking evil in your hearts, he says. Jesus knew what was in a man, John 2 said. Verse 5, for what is easier to say?

Your sins are forgiven, or to say rise and walk? Now what Jesus does not mean is it's just as easy to say both because both are easy to say. Sins are forgiven, rise and walk. Which one's easier to say?

Well they're both easy to say because I just said them both. But which one's easier to say and keep credibility? Which one's easier to say and then have them validated? Well if I say your sins are forgiven, it's an invisible transaction.

How do I know that their sins are actually forgiven, that God forgave, propitiated all wrath and all that? I can't see that because forgiveness is invisible. It's easier to say your sins are forgiven.

Harder to do, but easier to say. Can you say sins are forgiven or to say rise and walk? And by the way, which one's easier for God to do? Both just as easy because everything's just as easy for God. Omniscient God, omnipotent God can do anything as easily as anything else, A .W. Tozer said.

All his acts are done without effort. He expends no energy that must be replenished. His self-sufficiency makes it unnecessary for him to look outside of himself for a renewal of strength. But what is happening here?

Jesus is going to authenticate his claim that he is the Son of Man, that he's the Son of God, that he's God in the flesh, by doing something. And what does he do that they can see? They can't see forgiveness of sins, which has already been granted, but they could see if this guy can stand up and walk out of there.

Verse 6, why are there miracles and signs that Jesus could do? A. Because he's God, but B. Because he's attested by God that he is the Son of God by what he does. Verse 6, but that you may know that the Son of Man, Jesus loved to call himself that, has authority on earth to forgive sins.

He said to the paralytic, rise, pick up your bed, and go home. Verse 7, just simply, plainly, shortly, curtly says, he rose and went home. Jesus authenticates his declaration of forgiveness and verifies his claim of Messiahship by making the man get up and take his bed and go home.

I wonder why Jesus said pick up your bed and go home. I probably would have liked to get rid of that nasty old thing. And by the way, he rose and went home. You can't get into the house, it's too crowded in the house, it's too crowded by the door, and Jesus says your sins are forgiven, pick up your bed and walk, and it's like the parting of the ways of the Red Sea.

People just stand back, probably with their lips hanging down to about here, and their mouth open, and the guy just walks out. Hard to get him in, but it was easy to get him out. Jesus wasn't just a big talker like the scribes and the Pharisees.

And verse 8 says of Matthew 9, and when the crowd sought, they responded rightly at least. They were afraid. Why? Because God's in my midst and I'm sinful, he's God. It's like Peter on the boat, it's like Isaiah before the throne of God, and they glorified God who had given such authority to men.

No Compromise Radio Closing and Ministry Information

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's Word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 830 and 11 a .m. and Sunday evenings at 6 p .m. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston, Massachusetts. You can check us out online at bbcchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff, or management.