Introduction: We have seen Luke describe the ministry of Jesus by beginning to unfold for us his teaching ministry, his healing ministry, and, as we saw last week, his ministry of calling and spiritually forming a group of followers or disciples. This morning, Luke adds another ingredient to the picture, that of opposition. In fact, from this point forward, Jesus’ ministry will be characterized by increasing opposition. Where does it come from? What is its source? It centers on who Jesus claims to be, and on what he claims we need. Through his actions, Jesus claims to be the Lord of heaven and earth. Through his words, he says that our ultimate need is forgiveness, which can only come from him. When this became clear to the Pharisees, they didn’t like it very much. Forgiveness, we learn, is a hard road to walk, for the Pharisees, for Jesus, and for us. But it is the road that leads to life.

 

I. Faithful Friends

            A. Let’s begin to get the picture of what’s going on by thinking first about these faithful fellows that bring their paralyzed friend to see Jesus. Picture Christmas Eve, in particular, our Children’s Pageant. At that particular time, this room is generally filled to the brim. Now, picture the appearance of a saw, poking through the ceiling, causing plaster to begin falling on your head. Picture, next, a man on a stretcher being dropped right in front of the pageant. What is your reaction? If you’re a trustee, you probably begin to wonder who is going to repair the roof and how much it’s going to cost! If you’re the pageant director, or a parent of a participant, you might be worried that this interruption will ruin all the time and effort that have been put into the production. If you are the pastor, you’re probably thinking about calling the deacons forward in order to get this guy out of here so that the “show” can go on.

 

            B. When it happened to Jesus, in the midst of a crowded house where he was teaching, none of these reactions came from him. Jesus didn’t notice the destruction of the roof, or the interruption of his message; instead, he noticed the faith of the friends: “When Jesus saw their faith. . .” These fellows who were carrying their paralyzed friend on a mat were determined and resourceful. Hearing that the healer was in the neighborhood, they weren’t about to let the opportunity pass to bring one who was in need to Jesus. When they discovered that they couldn’t possibly squeeze through the door, they simply made their way up onto the flat roof of the home, cut a hole, and lowered their friend down. Their aim was dead on; the man landed “right in front of Jesus.” Jesus viewed their determination and their resourcefulness as a sign that they truly believed that God was at work in him. Faith, we are led to see on many different occasions, is not just mental assent; it puts what we believe into practice. It acts on what we know.

 

II. Suspicious Pharisees

            A. But faith was not the only attitude present in that room. There was also an attitude of suspicion. We’re told up front that a group of Pharisees and teachers of the law had come from every village of Galilee, and from as far away as Judea and Jerusalem, and had taken front row seats in this house. What were they doing there? Well, they were the most influential of the four Jewish sects that existed at the time. Essentially, they had gathered to check Jesus out. Like Jesus, they too were concerned about the coming of God’s kingdom. Their particular kingdom-plan was to intensify observance of the Jewish law. This, they believed, would create the conditions necessary for God to act, judging the pagans and liberating his people Israel. Jesus, it seemed, had a different kind of plan which made them both uneasy, and suspicious.

 

            B. Their suspicions were intensified when the first words Jesus said to the paralyzed man were these: “Friend, your sins are forgiven.” To those expecting a physical healing, which was obviously what most, it not all, thought the man needed, these were surprising words. To the Pharisees, these words sent shock waves shooting through their system. It was blasphemy! Who did this guy think he was? Who could forgive sins but God alone? What’s going on here? To blaspheme is to claim to be something, or to do something, only God could be or do. These religious leaders knew, as David so aptly puts it in Psalm 51, that all sin is finally against God, and so it’s only God, the offended party, from whom we must finally seek forgiveness.

 

For instance, I can punch Mike in the nose, and Michelle can forgive me, but since Mike is the offended party, he is really the only one who can forgive. So, if Jesus is offering forgiveness to this man, it means that he considered himself to be the offended party. That means he’s either a nut, a blasphemer, or, something the leaders couldn’t bring themselves to accept – somehow God in the flesh.

 

C. Furthermore, the normal way for sins to be forgiven was through a priest, by means of the sacrificial system, at the Temple in Jerusalem. Jesus was not only claiming to speak for God in a remarkable way, he was slicing through and undermining all of the normal channels of authority that were currently in place, including a temple bureaucracy which had become corrupt and discriminatory. If you follow what Jesus was doing and claiming, it would mean that even people like the “undesirable” Gentiles, who were either kept out of the Temple, or charged exorbitant rates for animals to sacrifice, would have free and ready access to God through Jesus. The icing on the cake was when Jesus went on to refer to himself as the “Son of Man,” a figure from Daniel 7 that referred to the one through whom God was going to set up his kingdom and grant authority over all peoples and all nations (Da. 7:14).

 

III. Hard Roads

            A. So, when we begin to think of the hard road of forgiveness, here is hard road number one. It was a hard road for the Pharisees not only because of who Jesus, through his actions, was claiming to be, but also because he was calling into question the traditional ways of doing business, ways that they simply did not want to change. As far as Jesus was concerned, he was the real temple and forgiveness belonged out on the streets, available to all, without cost, through him. If there was life down this road, the Pharisees and teachers of the law couldn’t see it. Forgiveness, as they figured it, could not come without their management of it.

 

            B. Hard road number two was actually the road Jesus knew he was going to have to walk in order to bring forgiveness about. For, there would be a cost, a cost that he would pay. Listen again to what Jesus says to those who were questioning his right to forgive: “Which is easier: to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’?” Well might we think at first blush that saying “Get up and walk” is the harder statement, for you’d certainly have to prove it; you’d actually have to make the guy walk, while anyone could say “Your sins are forgiven.” But the infinitely harder thing for Jesus to do was the offer of forgiveness because forgiveness requires both God’s love and justice, a justice that required Jesus go to the cross and hang in our place, paying the price for our sin – the greatest problem of the human condition – so that we may go free.

 

Saying “Friend, your sins are forgiven” was not only a hard road for the Pharisees to travel; it was a hard road for Jesus as well. Would he, could he, actually take up his cross and follow the will of his Father? Out of love for us, we know that he did that very thing.

 

C. Is forgiveness a hard road for you? It certainly can be when we realize that to receive it, we must, like this paralyzed man, come to Jesus “flat on our back,” if you will, doing nothing and offering nothing but our neediness. Our temptation, like the Pharisees, is to try and manage the process, believing that we must do certain things or meet certain conditions in order to merit God’s grace. But that makes the road much harder than it needs to be; it is, in fact, a dead end road that leads only to pain and frustration and an increasing burden of guilt.

 

The road that leads to life, the road that leads to the forgiveness of sin and the lifting of guilt so that we may get up and get going again, is the road that Jesus walked. The good news of the gospel is that Jesus has walked the hard road before us so that we don’t have to. If we follow him we will come to see that he has done all that is necessary. All we need to do is to praise him, and we do that by loving him and our neighbor as he has first loved us.