0:1 - So, just was thinking this morning, sometimes with the bustle of getting everything ready, I just asked Rob if he was prayed for yet this morning, and he said, no, I haven't been.
0:9 - So we'll pray for Rob.
0:11 - Yeah, he missed that.
0:12 - But we'll pray for Rob this morning as he leads us in the word.
0:17 - Lord God, thank you for Rob.
0:19 - Thank you for the gifts that you've given him.
0:21 - Thank you for the ways that you have equipped him.
0:23 - And Lord God, thank you that he is an instrument of yours to be used here in this moment.
0:29 - God, I ask that you calm his heart, you calm his nerves, and that you use him to speak to us.
0:37 - God, you have words for your people.
0:38 - And we ask that we have ears to hear and eyes to see what it is that you have for us.
0:45 - Lord God, thank you for this opportunity.
0:48 - Amen.
0:54 - Well, good morning.
0:55 - Let's have a look at our passage for this morning.
0:58 - So we're following through the Book of Luke, and so here we are at a story, I think, that is pretty well known to us.
1:7 - So Luke 5, verses 17 to 26.
1:10 - One day Jesus was teaching, and the Pharisees and the teachers of the law were sitting there.
1:16 - They had come from every village of Galilee and from Judea and Jerusalem.
1:21 - And the power of the Lord was with Jesus to heal the sick.
1:25 - Some men came carrying a paralyzed man on a mat and tried to take him into the house to lay him before Jesus.
1:32 - When they could not find a way to do this because of the crowd, they went up onto the roof and lowered him on his mat through the tiles into the middle of the crowd, right in front of Jesus.
1:43 - When Jesus saw their faith, he said, friend, your sins are forgiven.
1:48 - The Pharisees and the teachers of the law began thinking to themselves, who is this fellow who speaks blasphemy?
1:53 - Who can forgive sins but God alone?
1:56 - Jesus knew what they were thinking and asked, why are you thinking these things in your hearts?
2:0 - Which is easier to say your sins are forgiven or to say get up and walk?
2:5 - But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.
2:10 - So he said to the paralyzed man, I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.
2:16 - Immediately he stood up in front of them and took what he'd been lying on and went home praising God.
2:21 - Everyone was amazed and gave praise to God.
2:23 - They were filled with awe and said, we have seen remarkable things today.
2:28 - This is the word of the Lord.
2:32 - Now I saw this passage come up ever since Easter, we've been kind of working our way through the book of Luke.
2:39 - And I saw this passage and I thought, oh man, Roevaug had preached on this passage a couple of years ago.
2:44 - And it was a really great sermon.
2:46 - And I think a lot of us remember that sermon.
2:49 - And I thought, how am I going to talk about something that is probably fresh in the mind of a lot of people?
2:55 - In my day job as a teacher, you get a fresh crowd every year.
2:58 - You can tell the same jokes and same stories year in and year which I've done.
3:2 - And it works out really well, but I feel like we kind of remember this.
3:6 - So I'm not going to focus quite as much on the healing aspect of this.
3:10 - We're going to look at a couple of different parts of the story.
3:12 - There's a lot of course, with any biblical passage, there's a lot to dig into.
3:16 - And so hopefully, I'm going to try to explore some areas that maybe Roald Vagha didn't go into and see if we can find some new things in this passage.
3:25 - So we're going to talk primarily about boldness, and I don't know if you see what I did there.
3:29 - It's a bold font.
3:34 - Before we get into this sermon though, I need to ask if there are any present or former players from the Boston Bruins here this morning.
3:43 - You could just maybe give me a sign or something.
3:46 - Sometimes we get some.
3:48 - Anyway, okay, not today.
3:50 - That's okay.
3:50 - I'm going to say some stuff about the Bruins.
3:55 - Those of you of a certain age may remember a player called Ray Bork.
3:59 - And Ray Bork was one of the greatest hockey players of all time.
4:2 - He was a defenseman, and he played for 21 years with the Boston Bruins.
4:8 - He was known for scoring a lot of goals.
4:11 - Quite often, defensemen sort of stay back there.
4:12 - They protect the goal, they protect the net and everything.
4:15 - They don't always go forward and score a lot of goals.
4:16 - But Ray Bork was known for getting up there and scoring goals.
4:20 - In fact, he holds records, which I think stand to this day, for most goals by a defenseman and most assists by a defenseman.
4:28 - However, as his career went on, there was one thing he had not achieved.
4:34 - And Boston wasn't always a strong team in those days.
4:38 - They came close in 1988 and in 1990.
4:41 - They made it all the way to the Stanley Cup.
4:44 - But in both cases, they ran into an Oilers dynasty that just couldn't be overcome.
4:51 - But how do you get to the late 90s?
4:52 - Some of the boomers are like, I don't understand that reference.
4:55 - Anyway, that's okay.
4:56 - The Gen Zs are laughing.
5:0 - I thought for a brief second about getting AI to draw a picture of Ray Bork drinking from it.
5:3 - Anyway, I'm not an AI fan.
5:6 - So, late 90s, Ray Bork had been with the Bruins for 21 years, and he was very patient that whole time.
5:15 - Someday we're going to win the cup.
5:16 - And the Bruins did all right with Bork on the ice, but it wasn't a deep team.
5:20 - And so finally in 2000, he has to be traded to the Colorado Avalanche, where interestingly he was paired up with an old nemesis of his named Patrick Dwa, that he had trouble scoring against.
5:30 - Anyway, and finally in 2001, and his last game of his career, game seven of the Stanley Cup, Ray Bork finally won the Stanley Cup.
5:39 - And as part of the celebrations, you've probably seen this before, all the players are at center ice, and they bring out the Stanley Cup, the guys wearing white gloves, and they give it to the team captain, which was Joe Sackick.
5:48 - And the team captain skates around first.
5:51 - And some of you remember this, Joe Sackick instantly handed the cup off to Ray Bork.
5:55 - You take it first, you skate around the ice.
5:58 - And so Ray Bork got to celebrate with the Stanley Cup before even his team captain.
6:2 - Ray Bork was a very, very patient man.
6:5 - He waited 21 years.
6:6 - He still holds a record that he probably would be happy not to hold, playing 1800 regular season and playoff games before winning the Stanley Cup.
6:15 - No one else has waited that long.
6:18 - When I think of patience, I think of Ray Bork.
6:22 - So as we get into our passage here, let's see where patience comes into this.
6:26 - So right at the start, we have this scene where Jesus is going around healing.
6:30 - He's already healed some lepers.
6:33 - He's done a lot of healing at Peter's house.
6:35 - Peter's mother-in-law was sick and he took her hand and she got up and the fever left her.
6:40 - After that, every time he heals somebody, this the whole rest of the day is spent healing.
6:45 - People come from everywhere and he heals people and drives out demons.
6:49 - He's been doing this all over Galilee.
6:50 - So here he is again at someone's house and the place is packed.
6:55 - Every time I read this passage, I always picture, yeah, the place is packed.
6:58 - People come from all over Galilee, from Judea and Jerusalem.
7:2 - And then as I was reading it, preparing for the sermon, I realized it's not the people they're talking about.
7:6 - It's the Pharisees had come from everywhere.
7:9 - The Pharisees are still in the mode that they want to check Jesus out and see what this guy is claiming about himself.
7:16 - Is he somebody that we should get excited about?
7:19 - So the Pharisees have packed this house.
7:21 - And some houses in those days were quite large, big huge living areas and stuff.
7:25 - The early church often gathers and they'll meet in houses.
7:29 - And it's not in some of the living room.
7:31 - Some of these houses were quite large.
7:32 - So this place is packed.
7:33 - They're sticking out the doors and everything.
7:35 - And all the good seats, as usual, are taken up by the Pharisees.
7:40 - Jesus hadn't really started to argue with the Pharisees yet.
7:43 - He hadn't called them blind guides.
7:44 - He hadn't called them out for things they're doing.
7:47 - And so at this point, things are still okay, but we'll see where this is going to go during this passage here.
7:53 - Now, along come four guys with their friend on a mat, and they want to get into the house because they know that if they see Jesus, their friend can be healed.
8:3 - But these guys are not Ray Bork.
8:5 - Ray Bork would have stood outside that house and realized, oh man, place is really packed.
8:9 - I think a lot of Canadians would have, right?
8:11 - These guys are obviously not Canadian.
8:13 - Stand outside and say, well, I guess I better wait my turn.
8:15 - Eventually I'll probably get in.
8:16 - Jesus got to come out sometime.
8:17 - I'll see if I can talk to him.
8:18 - Oh, he went by, I missed him.
8:20 - These guys, Ray Bork would have waited outside for 21 years before finally muscling his way inside.
8:25 - These guys don't seem to hesitate at all.
8:28 - They go straight up on the roof and they start pulling off tiles.
8:32 - In some houses of the time, there was actually like a little central hole in the roof with like a little pool down inside in the living area.
8:39 - And it would kind of let in light and a bit of rain and stuff.
8:41 - And so you can imagine these guys might have thought, maybe if we go up here, there's gonna be a hole we can lower our friend down in.
8:47 - But in Matthew and Mark's version, it's quite clear they had to dig through the roof and move tiles out of the way.
8:52 - This wasn't just, oh, look, there's a hole here.
8:54 - They're into destruction of property.
8:57 - These guys are not patient Canadians.
8:59 - And why do they want to do this?
9:2 - Because they know that if they get close to Jesus, Jesus is gonna do something.
9:7 - Jesus is going to make their friend well.
9:10 - And so they don't care about anybody else.
9:13 - They don't care about anyone else's property.
9:14 - They just want to get to Jesus.
9:18 - These guys are really bold.
9:21 - Now sometimes we think about boldness.
9:24 - And again, it's not a natural thing, I think, for a lot of us.
9:26 - You're like, let's just be really pushy and stuff.
9:29 - I heard an interview with a guy a few weeks ago.
9:32 - The guy's name was Daniel Price.
9:34 - And he was talking about how his dad is really known in their church community as a prayer warrior.
9:38 - Like if you've got something that you really need prayer for, and it's something pretty heavy, you go see Daniel's dad.
9:45 - And Daniel, a friend of his had got a cancer diagnosis, but it was looking fairly positive.
9:49 - They caught it early, it was gonna be treatable.
9:51 - And Daniel's like, so how are you feeling?
9:52 - He said, guys, like, I think I'm doing all right.
9:54 - I don't need your dad to pray for me just yet.
9:57 - He was kind of saving that in reserve.
9:59 - And people went to Daniel's dad, said like, how is it like, you seem to pray for things and God just hears and answers.
10:6 - Like, why is it that God seems to answer your prayer so consistently?
10:10 - And the guy said, I just wear God out.
10:14 - I just go back and back and I just drive God nuts, his words.
10:19 - I just keep praying and praying and praying and do not let go and do not give up.
10:23 - And eventually, God answers my prayers.
10:26 - So there's a real boldness in there.
10:29 - God doesn't seem to mind, Jesus doesn't seem to mind, when we get right up in his face and get really bold.
10:37 - Jesus does not rebuke these guys, I think he just wrecked this guy's roof.
10:41 - They lower the friend down and of course, Jesus is expecting this, but like he almost seems kind of happy to see him.
10:48 - Jesus doesn't rebuke them, doesn't say wait in line, there's a bunch of other people out there.
10:52 - Jesus is open to bold approaches, he's open to our bold approaches.
10:57 - We see this in some other passages in scripture as well.
11:1 - There's the Roman Centurion that says, Jesus, I want you to heal my servant and I'm not even gonna come, don't even come to my house, just say the word, it's gonna happen, I know you have the power.
11:14 - There's the Syrophoenician woman, remember who comes, she's not even a Jew, she's a Gentile, comes up and says, would you please heal me?
11:21 - And Jesus, well, you know, I can't really do that, I'm sent to the lost children of Israel, and she says, yeah, but, but even the dogs get to eat the crumbs, give me some crumbs.
11:30 - It's a pretty bold thing to say to a famous Jewish teacher, she's not even Jewish, he shouldn't even be talking to her, and instead of rebuking her, Jesus is like, it's good, your faith has made you well.
11:41 - And there's Peter, I mean, pick a passage in the New Testament where Peter's name is mentioned, he's just bold all the time, from wanting to stay up on the mountain to the transfiguration, to walking on water, to running into Jesus' tomb, John gets there first, Peter's rushes straight in, Peter's bold at everything, and there's a couple of times where Jesus corrects Peter, but Jesus seems to appreciate this, even James and John, when they come to Jesus and say, we want to sit at your right and left in heaven.
12:11 - Jesus doesn't say, well, that's a terrible thing to ask.
12:13 - I can't believe you're being so pushy.
12:15 - He actually humors them, kind of traps them a little bit, like yeah, actually the father is in charge of that, not me, but he does not tell them, you're just being too pushy here.
12:25 - I think in a lot of cases, we could be a whole lot more like Daniel Price's dad when we're praying.
12:32 - We can come to Jesus and be a whole lot more blunt about what we're asking for.
12:36 - Sometimes you just feel like we don't want to be too pushy.
12:40 - Jesus is telling us through this passage, it's okay to ask for really big things, it's okay to elbow your way to the front.
12:46 - It's okay to be in, as we might say, in God's face all the time, to just pray and pray and pray and pray and not feel like we're kind of bothering God here or something.
12:58 - And as I was thinking about this sermon, this passage, I thought like, what is something that we could be praying about with great boldness?
13:5 - And I was thinking about building and stuff.
13:9 - And so we've heard a lot, we're planning forward for a new building.
13:13 - One of the questions we have in there is, what's gonna happen with Happy Day?
13:17 - It's not super obvious at this point.
13:20 - We're gonna have to get out of this building, possibly as early as next spring.
13:24 - Our new building won't be ready for a year and a half or possibly two years.
13:28 - So we have some ideas already starting to think about what that might look like for our worship space.
13:33 - But for Happy Day, for the daycare, it's not really obvious.
13:37 - There's several options that are floored out there.
13:39 - None of them really seem to be, like that's the perfect thing.
13:43 - We don't seem to have heard from God on this yet.
13:46 - I think back to when we first started talking about, should we build a new building?
13:49 - For a lot of people, a big concern is, but what about this building?
13:53 - Like I got the impression that if this building was just going to be torn down or sold for a store or something like that, probably would have felt pretty weird about that.
14:1 - And then out of nowhere comes Blooming House and said, like, would you guys ever think about selling your church?
14:7 - We had just started talking about whether we were going to do with the church, and God throws them our way.
14:12 - I think somewhere out there, somewhere out there, I am convinced that God has got an awesome solution for Happy Day and how this is going to work.
14:21 - But I don't think we've seen it yet.
14:24 - I'd like if we could be bold as a congregation and give it to praying and saying, Lord, show us what to do with Happy Day.
14:30 - Show us what's going to happen.
14:31 - How are we going to keep this ministry alive?
14:33 - We've got a group of kids out there whose most of their parents are not Christians, and they send their kids to a Christian daycare five days a week, where we get to minister to them and teach them about Jesus.
14:44 - That seems like too good of an option to just kind of like let go easily.
14:48 - But I know God's already, he already knows what the solution is.
14:51 - I love that it is too.
14:53 - And anyway, I think that's what I'm going to be bold about, praying, Lord, what should we do about Happy Day?
14:58 - What are you going to do about Happy Day?
15:0 - Let's be even more bold.
15:1 - Lord, what are you going to do about Happy Day?
15:4 - It's your ministry, this is your church.
15:6 - Show us what you've got in mind.
15:11 - All right.
15:13 - Typo in this one, I think this is actually Acts 4, 29.
15:15 - Anyway, when the disciples are praying, at one point after Jesus' resurrection, the apostles are arrested and they're beaten and they're sent loose.
15:25 - And what do they do?
15:25 - They immediately go back to kind of their home base, their building where they've been hanging out, and they pray.
15:30 - And they're thankful, but they want to keep going out and telling more people about Jesus.
15:34 - And they talk about boldness.
15:35 - And Lord, enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness.
15:39 - And it says in the next verse, they prayed with boldness and the house where they were meeting was shaken.
15:46 - This doesn't seem like a sign of rebuke from the Lord.
15:48 - But we ask for boldness, we pray in boldness, God honors that and even seems kind of excited by that.
15:54 - The place is shaking.
15:55 - It's like God is just like, yes, this is what I have been wanting.
15:58 - This is why I poured my spirit out on you so we could see this happening.
16:4 - Now there's another side to this story as well.
16:7 - And that's to do with forgiveness and that's to do with healing.
16:10 - So many years ago, I was on council and we were looking for a pastor.
16:17 - And I forget if this when we were searching for Pastor Harry or searching for Pastor Chad, there was a search committee and they were looking at candidates and stuff.
16:24 - But meanwhile, there was a guy from the denomination that was kind of traveling through Eastern Canada and he was preaching at different churches.
16:30 - And while he was here, he let us know that his position with the denomination was being wrapped up and he was kind of heading back into the preaching pool and was going to be eligible for a call.
16:40 - And we thought, well, maybe we should see if this guy would be a good fit for our church.
16:45 - So council arranged for a meeting with this guy after the morning service.
16:49 - So we all went downstairs in the old council room over here, and all the elders and deacons are sitting around, and we had about a one-hour interview with this guy.
16:56 - And at the start of the interview, we didn't plan this out.
16:58 - At the start of the interview, we're all kind of leaning forward a little bit, engaged, kind of thinking like, oh, let's hear what this guy has to say.
17:4 - And about five minutes into the back and forth with the questions, this guy said something.
17:9 - I thought, oh, I know there's a guy around the table here is not going to be too pleased to hear that.
17:14 - Another corner of my eye could see the guy just kind of leaned back and fold his arms.
17:18 - Yeah, this is kind of, I don't need to listen to the rest of this.
17:20 - I think I made my mind up.
17:21 - Then a few minutes later, something else came up and I noticed at the corner of my eye, somebody else leaned back.
17:25 - I still haven't really clicked yet.
17:27 - And a few minutes later, he said something, he's like, yeah, that's a red flag for me.
17:31 - And as I was leaning back, I noticed two other guys are leaning back at the same time.
17:35 - By the end of the one hour meeting, I looked around and everybody at the council table was all leaned back with their arms folded.
17:41 - It's like, okay, well, this isn't going to be a long decision.
17:44 - Something about just like leaning forward and listening and engaged and leaning back and thinking like, yeah, I don't need to hear anymore.
17:51 - So tip young people, if you're ever in a job interview, partway through the job interview, the interviewer just leans back, it's probably not an awesome sign.
18:2 - Then there's the Pharisees.
18:4 - They're still trying to check Jesus out.
18:6 - They've seen him do all this healing, but that does not convince them that he is the messiah.
18:11 - And the Pharisees, they see themselves as the religious good guys of the time.
18:16 - You know, they're not like the Sadducees.
18:18 - Those guys don't even believe in the resurrection.
18:21 - The Pharisees are convinced that not only are they the ones that are most pure in their theology, but they're the ones that are sticking up for the nation of Israel.
18:28 - They're the ones that are closest to God.
18:30 - And so they're actively looking for the messiah.
18:33 - Two times before Jesus, some people came and said, I'm he, I'm the messiah.
18:39 - And both times the Pharisees are like, cool, let's follow this guy.
18:43 - And in both those cases, there's a bit of rebellion, the guy gets killed, everything kind of comes to an end.
18:48 - After Jesus' time, there's another guy comes along who also leads this big rebellion, and the Pharisees and everybody in the religious establishments like this is the guy, and he gets killed, and it all just comes to an end.
19:0 - I mean, Gamaliel talks about this in the Book of Acts when they're talking about whether or not they should like execute the disciples or just beat them and send them loose.
19:7 - The Pharisees are quite willing to find a messiah, and here comes the big test.
19:14 - So, this guy gets lowered down through the roof, and the Pharisees are like, okay, I wonder what's gonna happen here, this is interesting.
19:21 - Again, they're all kinda leaning forward in this, what's Jesus gonna do?
19:24 - And Jesus turns to the guy and says, your sins are forgiven.
19:28 - You can imagine at that moment, every Pharisee in that room is like, yeah, okay, I'm out.
19:32 - That's not it.
19:33 - For some reason, they cannot accept that this is Jesus, oh, sorry, that this is Jesus, that this is the Messiah.
19:41 - They just refuse to believe that.
19:42 - It's like, wait a minute, only God can forgive his sins.
19:44 - What about that guy 20 years ago?
19:46 - You thought he was the Messiah, you thought he was God, and it turns out you were wrong.
19:50 - Sometimes, there just seems to be like a block there, and people just can't seem to see who Jesus is.
19:58 - Sometimes you're sharing the gospel with people and just like, I don't know what it is and it just seems to block there.
20:3 - These Pharisees have got a block.
20:5 - They still don't believe it's Jesus, even after he heals this guy, even after he comes back from the dead, they still refuse to believe that this might be the Messiah.
20:15 - So the Pharisees lean back and they're thinking to themselves, who can forgive sins but God alone?
20:21 - Of course, they're thinking this, right?
20:22 - They don't say this out loud.
20:24 - And Jesus knows what they're thinking.
20:25 - And you think if you needed some kind of confirmation, it would be Jesus saying what he says next.
20:32 - You know, I hear you guys saying in your hearts, who can forgive sins of God alone?
20:36 - Like, really?
20:37 - You read all of our minds like that?
20:40 - They don't even want to hear it.
20:41 - They're done.
20:41 - They have leaned back, their arms are folded, and for the next 24 chapters of the Gospels, they're just like, I'm out.
20:48 - This is obviously not gonna be a thing.
20:51 - Forgiving sins, this is kind of significant.
20:54 - When this guy comes down, what does he actually ask of Jesus?
20:59 - And his friends are up there looking down through the hole.
21:1 - Luke doesn't record them saying anything.
21:3 - The guy doesn't say anything.
21:4 - He just wants to be right there.
21:8 - So boldness can kind of take two approaches, right?
21:10 - We talked earlier about how boldness, I guess it was mostly me talking.
21:13 - Anyway, talk about boldness and how boldness sometimes has to do with a bold request.
21:19 - Bringing your request to God, bringing your prayers to God, and doing it even like strongly, maybe even impolitely, but asking in boldness.
21:28 - But sometimes the boldness is not a request.
21:30 - This guy doesn't even say anything.
21:31 - He just comes in Jesus' presence.
21:34 - It's like, here I am.
21:36 - He's right there.
21:38 - If you're anything like me, you spend a lot of your quiet time in the morning with a whole bunch of things to pray about.
21:44 - And it's pretty much a one-way conversation, just like me monologuing, God hopefully like taking out a list of things that I'm praying for.
21:51 - And it's like, okay, that's all that stuff.
21:53 - And I know that I should be having more of a conversation and more of a dialogue, praying and listening, listening and praying.
22:0 - Sometimes it's pretty good to just come into a time of prayer with God and not even have anything to say.
22:7 - Here I am Lord, and just focus on being in God's presence.
22:11 - Maybe he's gonna speak, maybe not.
22:14 - Just being in his presence would be pretty good.
22:17 - When I was in university, there was a guy that came to talk to our intervarsity group at university, and he talked about how he would often pray before he'd go to bed at night, and he said, a lot of times while I'm praying, I'm already in bed, kind of covers up and everything, head in the pillow, and I'm praying, and then I fall asleep.
22:34 - And he said, when I was younger, I used to be embarrassed about that.
22:36 - He'd wake up in the middle of the night and realize like, I fell asleep of my quiet time again.
22:40 - He said, now that I'm older, I realize sometimes that I wake up in the morning, I think I've been praying all night.
22:47 - I was 19, I thought, well, that's silly.
22:50 - That's not how that works.
22:52 - And I'm a little older than 19 now, and I think I have a new appreciation for what that guy was talking about.
22:57 - Sometimes just entering into God's presence and have that quiet relaxation, sometimes God might even put you to sleep, so you can kind of spend a long time in his presence.
23:6 - Anyway, there's something a bit mystical about that, which we're not really always into, I think, in the CRC.
23:11 - It's kind of mystical stuff, but entering into God's presence, this guy doesn't even ask anything.
23:15 - He just wants to be close to Jesus.
23:21 - We're talking about forgiveness of sins.
23:23 - So, this is the right scripture reference.
23:26 - God exalted him, Jesus, to his own right hand as prince and savior that he might bring Israel to repentance and forgive their sins.
23:34 - This is one of the major reasons Jesus came to earth.
23:37 - We just had Easter not that long ago, and before we get to Pentecost, we're kind of still in that sort of Easter season, and we think a lot about Jesus coming and dying for our sins and rising from the dead and conquering death, and that is pretty amazing.
23:51 - It's the core foundation of our faith.
23:53 - But there's a lot of passages in the Bible like this one here where it says Jesus came to earth to forgive sins.
24:0 - It's not a small thing at all.
24:2 - It's not just a test for the Pharisees that Jesus says your sins are forgiven.
24:6 - That's a really important thing.
24:7 - We know our sins are forgiven because Jesus died on the cross, but to hear that said again from Jesus, that's pretty great.
24:16 - And so at one point during the last month, I had a whole bunch of thoughts about forgiveness and what that meant and Jesus' forgiveness and our forgiveness and it actually kind of turned into a whole sermon.
24:26 - So that's going to be what the next sermon is about later on in May.
24:30 - I think we're going to talk about forgiveness.
24:32 - And so I won't go too much into it right now.
24:34 - So I hope you come back in a couple of weeks time.
24:38 - And of course, Jesus says, I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority enough to forgive sins.
24:42 - And he says to the guy, get up and walk.
24:45 - And everybody is completely amazed.
24:48 - And I wonder about this.
24:49 - Why are they so amazed?
24:50 - Jesus had already spent a couple of hours in there healing people of their sicknesses.
24:56 - He raised Peter's mother-in-law up from her fever.
24:58 - He spent the whole day after that healing people.
25:1 - He spent several other days healing people.
25:2 - He healed people with leprosy, drove out demons.
25:6 - And for some reason, when this guy stands up, everyone's like, wow, our minds are blown.
25:12 - This is the most amazing thing we've ever seen.
25:14 - Why do we assume that Jesus can do fevers and not legs?
25:18 - Like, how does that work?
25:20 - If he can heal leprosy, surely he can heal anything, but they're blown away.
25:25 - And I think anytime in the Bible, we see something about the Pharisees, that the Pharisees have done something kind of stupid or show some unbelief.
25:32 - I think that always reflects in us too.
25:34 - Shouldn't be like looking at those Pharisees.
25:36 - They didn't get it.
25:37 - Like we don't get it sometimes too.
25:40 - Why is it that sometimes we think Jesus can do some things and not other things?
25:44 - Some things we pray about, sometimes we think like, that's not something you should pray about.
25:49 - Whether it's something you should take care of your own, or maybe that's, we wouldn't say it out loud, but like maybe that's too big of an ask, that's too much heavy lifting.
25:56 - Seriously?
25:57 - I wonder if it's because sometimes we pray for some things and they seem to get answered.
26:2 - And other things we pray about for a long time, and we don't see an answer.
26:7 - Kind of like acorns and radishes.
26:9 - I don't know which one you'd rather eat.
26:12 - I kind of like radishes better than acorns.
26:14 - Acorns, they leave a taste in your mouth for several days.
26:16 - Anyway, we like radishes.
26:19 - Radishes, I think, hold the record.
26:21 - If you put a radish seed in the ground, if you're this time of year, you're kind of getting your seeds started and all kinds of things and are sprouting and stuff like that.
26:28 - We see that all around our house.
26:30 - You put a radish seed in, you're going to see it pop up like within a day, two days max.
26:35 - You're already seeing green stuff above.
26:37 - It's really reassuring because you put it in the dirt and the radish seed pops right up.
26:42 - Acorns, now you put an acorn in the ground in late October, you go back and chuck on it two days later, nothing.
26:49 - A couple of months later, nothing.
26:51 - Nothing's happening all through November, December, January.
26:56 - I think, well, I guess it was a dead acorn.
26:58 - That was a dud.
26:59 - It's not going to work.
27:1 - In that case, it was the wrong time.
27:4 - It's not the time for the acorn to be popping up yet.
27:6 - You can check on it every day.
27:8 - Nothing's going to happen.
27:10 - Even in the spring, something starts happening, but you don't see it for a long time.
27:15 - Oak trees are pretty cool, but they don't start quickly.
27:18 - You can go out there that whole summer and look, and you're not seeing anything pop up.
27:22 - There's a whole lot of stuff going on below the surface, but there's nothing really visible.
27:27 - But that doesn't mean nothing's happening.
27:29 - So those two things about acorns, that sometimes it's not the right time, and sometimes a lot is happening, but it's happening where we can't see it.
27:37 - I think that's pretty sedillient.
27:40 - We like radishes because it's so easy to see.
27:43 - Acorns are actually, I mean, an oak tree is going to give you a whole lot more shade and some nice wood than say a radish.
27:50 - And really radishes don't taste that great anyway.
27:53 - Sometimes we pray for radishes and God gives us an oak tree.
27:58 - The oak tree is a whole lot better, but it takes a lot of time and patience.
28:3 - Ray Bork would get this.
28:6 - So let's wrap up.
28:9 - What I think is really cool about this story too, is, I mean, the healing is pretty neat.
28:14 - The forgiveness of sins is really good, but ultimately this is a story about four guys that bring their friend to Jesus.
28:22 - They bring their friend to Jesus.
28:24 - And when you just get close to Jesus, you're in Jesus' presence, good things are gonna happen.
28:29 - It's the best place to be.
28:32 - So what about us?
28:33 - How do we bring our friends?
28:34 - How do we bring each other to Jesus?
28:37 - Well, in a very obvious, literal sense, bringing a friend to Jesus, we probably have some friends that aren't currently walking with the Lord.
28:44 - Whether they're people that have just never heard about Jesus or people that have kind of known Jesus and probably still know him, but just they aren't coming to church.
28:52 - They aren't, they just, it's not, they don't have time for that right now.
28:55 - The obvious thing, of course, is to talk to our friends, to encourage our friends, to bring them to Jesus, either through prayer, through scripture, through invitations, through encouragement.
29:6 - There's all kinds of ways to bring people to Jesus.
29:10 - And what about those of us that are already walking with the Lord?
29:13 - Well, there's all kinds of ways that we can be bringing each other to Jesus.
29:16 - Well, we come here on a Sunday morning to worship together.
29:19 - I mean, this is basically bringing each other to Jesus.
29:22 - Why was it so hard during COVID, sitting in your living room and just watching this tiny little church?
29:27 - It was not the same at all.
29:29 - And some of us actually kind of like that, right?
29:32 - Just you can stay in your pajamas and have a cup of coffee and you're on a comfy couch and everything.
29:35 - But there was something major missing during COVID.
29:39 - We were not able to bring each other to Jesus.
29:42 - We were all kind of in our separate little things.
29:45 - After church, I'm as guilty as this as anybody.
29:47 - And though the thought keeps coming to my head, I still keep forgetting to do it.
29:51 - Service is over, we head for coffee.
29:52 - And by the way, if you're a visitor here today, like this is not a church where we all kind of just head for the cars when the service is over.
29:59 - We like to hang around for quite a while.
30:1 - We like to get a chance to connect.
30:2 - And if you're a coffee drinker, there's lots of coffee out there.
30:6 - But the conversations often tend to go around.
30:8 - How was your week?
30:9 - What's up?
30:11 - It would be awesome if we were to see somebody over coffee and say, so what did Jesus do in your life this week?
30:17 - What's God doing in your life?
30:18 - And it doesn't have to be super invasive or anything.
30:21 - It just, what's God doing in your life?
30:25 - It's so much more profound and just as easy as, how was your week?
30:29 - How was your week with Jesus?
30:30 - We can bring each other to Jesus doing that.
30:36 - And near the end of this, immediately he stood up in front of them and went home praising God.
30:41 - I can't think of a better way to end off a sermon with a line like this.
30:46 - Soon we will get up and go home praising God.
30:51 - Ray Bork skating around with that Stanley Cup.
30:53 - And we've got something way better than a Stanley Cup that we could be celebrating and praising God for.
30:59 - Praise God for forgiveness.
31:0 - Praise God that he doesn't turn us away when we get really bold and in his face and ask things that we might consider kind of rude.
31:7 - Praise God for the fact that he wants us to come to him and just wants us to be in his presence.
31:13 - Amen.
31:15 - Let's pray.
31:20 - Jesus, I thank you that you have so much more patience than any of us.
31:25 - That you are not put off by our boldness even to the point of rudeness.
31:31 - That we can come to you and not fear being turned away and not fear judgment or being ignored or anything.
31:41 - And Lord, even though it's sometimes hard to feel that we can know in our heads that you have promised, that you are always with us.
31:50 - And Lord, pray that as we bring each other to you, that you will fill this space, fill our conversations, fill our relationships with your presence.
32:5 - Lord, thank you for giving us our sins.
32:7 - And thank you for walking with us every moment of every day, in Christ's name, amen.