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By Pastor Glenn Pease
People who survive great dangers and diseases are often creative people who do the unusual.
Robert Muller, in his memoirs, Most Of All, They Taught Me Happiness, tells of how creative he became under pressure.
In 1943 he was a member of the French Resistance.
Using the name of Parizot, he infiltrated a government agency, and was able to gather information on German troop movements.
He was tipped off that the Nazis were on to him, and coming to arrest him.
He fled to the attic of his office building.
Gestapo men were soon searching the premises.
Muller knew he had to come up with a plan to survive.
So he took off his glasses, and slick down his hair, and grabbed a file folder, and walked down stairs.
He walked right into the office where his secretary was being interrogated.
He asked her what all the excitement was about.
She didn't bat an eye, but said the gentlemen were looking for Parizot.
"Parizot!"
He exclaimed.
"I just saw him a few minutes ago on the fourth floor."
The Nazis rushed upstairs, and Muller was led to safety by his friends.
Cleverness and creativity are the keys to surviving what seem like hopeless situations.
We see it in the realm of diseases also.
Senator Frank Church of Idaho was told at age 33 that he had incurable cancer, and he was given 6 months to live.
He decided to take chances, and he submitted to a new radiation treatment just being developed.
He also decided to take chances, and be creative with his life.
He went into politics and sponsored risky legislation on civil-rights and the environment.
He was the first Senator to publicly oppose the Viet Nam war.
He did eventually die of his cancer, but not until 1984, which was 37 years after he was given 6 months.
The point is, people who are clever and creative, and who chose to do the unusual, are the people who experience the exceptional in life.
They survive when others parish.
They are restored to health when others die.
The paralytic in Mark 2 is just such a man.
He was bed ridden, and yet he got his body where men with two good legs could not get.
Jesus was surrounded by people, and no one could even get through the door into the house, let alone, near to Jesus.
Even Zacchaeus's idea of climbing a tree would not work here, for Jesus was in the house.
We don't know if it was his idea, or that of his friends carrying him, but they were like an ancient ambulance team who got their patient to the doctor on time.
When the normal route is closed, you need to come up with a creative alternative to reach a goal.
This team recognized that sometimes you have to start at the top and work down, and that is what they did.
They created a skylight before anybody thought of such a thing, and let their patient down through the roof right into the presence of Jesus.
They had no doubt what would happen, for Jesus, as far as the record reveals, never had a sick person in His presence that He did not heal.
We have no hint that any sick person ever went away saying, "I am not healed."
Nor do we have any record of Jesus ever walking away from a sick person, and not healing them.
They knew if they could just get him into the presence of Jesus, their labor would not be in vain.
Their faith in Jesus motivated them to be clever and creative.
I've read this account many times, and I always read verse 5 in a restricted sense.
Jesus seeing their faith responded and healed the paralytic.
Their faith, always meant to me, the faith of the friends who let him down.
Some make a big point of this being their faith, rather than his faith.
It is true, if it would have said his faith, the friends would be excluded.
But saying, their faith, does not exclude his.
The their, is plural, and could refer to all five of the team, including the young paralytic himself.
There is no reason why he should be excluded, as if he was just a lump of clay, with no say in what his friends were doing.
For all we know, he was the coach, and the whole thing was his idea from the start, and the roof route was his creative choice.
All we know for sure is, there were many paralytics who never walked again, but here was one who carried his bed home that day.
He was the exceptional paralytic.
He was aggressive in his search for a miracle.
We have all had experiences where it was hard to get into see the doctor, because he or she was so busy.
That was the problem with this paralytic.
When he got to the place where Jesus was, he realized he should have made an appointment.
The line of those ahead of him was long, and his only hope of seeing the doctor was aggressive cleverness.
This morning we want to look at this event from the point of view of the doctor's response to this most aggressive patient.
Keep in mind, it is aggressive patients who are often a pain to the doctor, who are the most likely to get well.
Let's begin with a negative aspect from the doctor's point of view, and look at-
I. THE DISTURBANCE OF THE DOCTOR.
I've often thought that one of the hardest aspects of being a doctor is the perpetual interruptions.
They can be doing one thing, and get a call to do another, at anytime of the day or night.
They can have a waiting room full of patients, and get called away to deliver a baby, or some other emergency at the hospital.
Being interrupted can put a lot of stress on people.
In our text, you will note that verse 2 tells us that Jesus was preaching to the crowd.
He was preaching the word, and nobody likes to be interrupted in the middle of a message.
This is highlighted by the police report concerning the New Testament Baptist church in Stockton, Cal.
It seems that Oscar MacAlister interrupted the morning message by shouting at the pastor that he was getting out of hand.
After the service pastor Murphy Paskill had an idea on how to prevent further such disturbances.
He got a revolver, and shot MacAlister for four times.
The pastor was booked on charges of attempted murder.
We do not know if he was as poor as preacher as MacAlister thought, but he was obviously a very poor shot.
The point is, interruptions can be very disturbing.
They can add so much stress to life that they become a cause for illness.
Rabbi Joshua Liebman wrote the popular book, Peace Of Mind, that started the avalanche of such books.
He was so swamped with calls and letters from people who wanted his help to get peace of mind, that he lost his own peace of mind.
He tried to help all who interrupted his life with a cry for help, and in just three years he was dead at age 43.
Perpetual disturbance can be deadly.
That is why Jesus very wisely got away from the burden of dealing with people's problems perpetually.
He was a physician who healed Himself by getting rest for restoration.
But we see also, that He handled interruptions in His life as opportunities.
It was a radical disturbance to have the roof torn away while you are preaching, but Jesus was not overly disturbed by this disturbance.
He was preaching the word of God, but he recognized that even the best things in life can be set aside to deal with the emergency of the moment.
If you are having your devotions, and are in prayer, and your child comes crying with a cut finger, it is not an offense to God to leave you devotion to care for the cut.
Jesus was a good emergency doctor.
He took this radical disturbance in stride, and gave it His full attention.
What Jesus demonstrates here is that we can decide to make an interruption in our life a burden or a blessing.
It was a very rude thing to do, to come in through the roof.
It is not only not appropriate in polite circles, it is not appropriate in any circle.
Jesus could have been offended, and He could have complained, and gotten the whole crowd to be critical of this team of disturbers of the peace.
Instead, He turned it into one of His greatest messages.
By healing this paralytic, Jesus not only demonstrated His power to heal, but His authority to forgive sin, and even more important, His willingness to do.
The crowd learned more that day about Jesus then they would have had this disturbance never taken place.
This paralytic became a powerful object lesson for the Greatest Doctor who ever lived.
If we are going to be like Jesus, we need to ask of every interruption in our lives, "How can I use this for a blessing?"
Next look at-
II.
THE DIAGNOSIS OF THE DOCTOR.
Diagnosis is a Greek word used only once in the New Testament in Acts 25:21.
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