“Healing – the Paralytic”

Scripture: Luke 5:17-26

How far would you go to bring a friend or loved one to Jesus? How important are their lives to you? When was the last time you spent an evening with a friend who was ill, or paid a visit to a person in a nursing home, or helped someone shoulder a heavy burden?

During a commencement address, Barbara Bush offered the following advice to the graduates:
As important as your obligation as a doctor, a lawyer or a business leader may be, your human connections with your spouse, your children and your friends are the most important investment you will ever make. At the end of your life, you will never regret not having passed one more test, not winning one more verdict or not closing one more deal, but you will regret time not spent with your spouse, your children or your friends.
--Barbara Bush, 1994 Commencement Address, Wellesley College, quoted in Current Thoughts and Trends, January 1995, 12.

Anyone who has gone on a mission trip or some other outreach effort knows the power of presence in another person’s life. It is, quite literally, life changing – for both you and them.

Read Luke 5:17-19

This passage begins with the thought that the power of healing suddenly came upon Jesus while he was teaching. It’s interesting that Luke doesn’t even mention the content of the lesson, but we are told that there was quite a crowd of people gathered to listen to him, including Pharisees from every area of the country. And considering the distances involved with the trips that many would have had to take, it could very well have been a planned event for these “teachers of the law”.
We don’t hear much about what Jesus was teaching, and we are about to hear of only one instance of healing, so it appears that he is about to “teach the teachers” about the power and authority of God.

In Mark’s report of this healing event, he writes that there were several friends who were involved, with 4 of them carrying their friend on his mat. How far do you think they had to travel to bring their friend to Jesus? And what about the faith that these men must have had – would they ever have expended that much effort if every one of them hadn’t been strong believers?
They were committed to the welfare of their paralyzed friend, and just as importantly, were committed to finding a cure for his condition. But there was an obstacle – they couldn’t get to Jesus because there were so many other people trying to get to him, not to mention the many Pharisees who were there that day. It was starting to look like they would never be able to accomplish their mission, until one of them thought about climbing to the roof of the house, making a hole in it, and letting their friend down into the middle of the room below. Think about the effort that would have been required to get their crippled friend up to the roof of that house, not to mention opening up the roof and lowering him down without dropping him!
One obstacle after another, and still they never gave up. That is dedication!

Read Luke 5:20-21

They bring their friend to Jesus specifically for healing, but the Lord seems to ignore the affliction, and, instead, forgives the man’s sins. There is no pronouncement that sin is the reason for the paralysis, which would have been the reason in the Pharisee’s minds, so this must have been offered for another reason.
Remember the teaching that had begun in the first place, and the presence of the Pharisees in such a great number? Jesus, it seems, is still in teaching mode, and the “teachers of the law”, without knowing it, had become the students! And what were the lessons?

The first one is that it was faith that brought them all together that day. It was the spiritual faith of the friends that was able to safely bring the man into the presence of Jesus Christ, and it was the legalistic faith of the Pharisees that led them to Jesus in an attempt to find out what he was up to.
Does faith matter? It certainly does – even for the Pharisees! God was orchestrating an amazing event that would decidedly demonstrate the power and authority that was in Christ.

The second lesson is that Jesus is exactly who he says he is, and there is no reason to try to look deeper than his word. The Pharisees weren’t quite ready to do that, though, as they were still trying to judge the Lord by the standard of their interpretation of the law.
No one will ever come to understand Jesus by examining him under the power of their own microscope. We can only begin to know the Son of God through the power and word of God. And when we think that God’s approach is insufficient, and continue to use human reasoning to figure him out, we will never succeed.

And the Pharisees were on course toward utter failure!

Read Luke 5:22-26

Lesson number 3 – Jesus is proven to be who he says he is, and God Incarnate has the same authority that God in Heaven has. So listen to him.

The Pharisees hadn’t actually spoken their condemnation of Jesus’ act of forgiveness – it was only in thought - but The Lord responded so that everyone could hear. And he asks that famous, yet rhetorical question: Which is easier to say – “Your sins are forgiven”, or “Get up and walk”? Of course, the Pharisees would never say the first, and they couldn’t do the second! Neither statement was possible for them!
But for God, whether in heaven or on earth, whether in Spiritual form or human, he can do both, and on this day, he uses healing to demonstrate his power and authority to forgive. The power of God at work – first to forgive, then to teach, and finally to heal, and it all came to be through the simple faith of the paralyzed man’s friends.

Over and over, throughout the Gospels, Jesus tells people that they are healed through the power of their faith. In Mark 11:22-26, Jesus tells his disciples that if they truly believe, and don’t doubt, that their faith could accomplish all things, including the moving of a mountain. And he concludes in that passage, “So I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.”

And Jesus offers no exceptions, no ifs, no buts – just the promise that if we truly believe in what we are asking for, it will be given. The paralytic’s friends had great faith – they never doubted that Jesus could and would heal their friend – and we don’t even read that they asked the Lord for healing. He used the situation to not only heal, but to teach a valuable lesson to all who were there that day, including the Pharisees. The “teachers”, though, didn’t learn the lesson very well, or at least the majority of them didn’t. But I think that the Lord planted some vital seeds in a few of them that day – it’s even possible that this is when Nicodemus first experienced Jesus, and later would want to learn more from him.

How powerful is faith? It enables God to work his incredible ways in our life, and even in the lives of others, and as incredible as it may seem, a lack of faith on our part, or even a weak faith for that matter, will inhibit God from completing that same mighty work.
Are you willing to step out in faith and let God work in your life, or in the life of a friend, or even in the life of a stranger? Are you prepared to let the Lord use you to accomplish his plan right in the middle of our lives?

Give it a try – what have you got to lose? And just think about all that you've got to gain!