Sermon Tone Analysis

The Mechanics of Walking Sermon

Luke 5:17-32

 

Big Idea:  Jesus’ message of repentance is for sinners and involves the forgiveness of their sins.

I.

Introduction

A.     Secular – Targeted commercials during Desperate Housewives.

Commercials are targeted to increase effectiveness.

B.     Personal

1.

If commercial advertisers could look through the TV screen and see you, what kind of products would they offer you?

What needs would they see in you that they would try to target?

Would they offer you new clothes?

A better car?

Healthier dinner recipes?

A new pill that promises a happy marriage?

A book on how to get that raise at work?

An award telling you how special you are?

2.      Whatever our needs are, we all have needs, even needs that we’re not aware of.

The good news is that God is aware of all of our needs and has the ability to meet them all.

C.     Biblical

1.      Literary context:  As we’ve traveled through the book of Luke, we’ve seen some amazing things that happen when Jesus shows up.

We’ve discussed the great pains that Luke went to in chronicling His account of Jesus’ life.

We’ve seen His birth as well as the birth of John the Baptist and how these two babies were met with much expectation because of the prophecies of what God was going to do at this time.

John’s job was to get people ready for Jesus and for His message, which he did with much zeal and enthusiasm.

2.      Jesus however took a different route.

The first thing He did after being baptized was to go out into the desert to fast and pray, and to be tempted by the devil.

With the power of the Holy Spirit, He resisted the devil and went to His hometown of Nazareth to publicly announce His intention to preach good news to the poor, both among the people of Israel and among the Gentiles.

3.

The Jews then thought that salvation was only for the people of Israel, God’s chosen people, so they chased Him out of town.

Jesus set up His headquarters in Capernaum where He demonstrated the authority of His message by casting out demons and healing the sick.

Last week, in the first half of chapter 5, you heard about how Jesus showed His sovereignty over nature with the incredible catch of fish and His power to heal the leper.

D.     Textual - And it’s here where we pick up in Luke’s gospel.

II.

Exposition

A.     Men bring paralytic to Jesus

1.

One of the factors that made Capernaum such a strategic location was that it was a border town.

It sat right at the crossing point between the tetrarchys of Herod Antipas and his brother Philip, both Roman rulers, so there were Roman military garrisons stationed in Capernaum and tax booths placed on this border so that anyone who was traveling along the Via Maris would have to declare what they were carrying and pay taxes on it.

2.      Collecting taxes back then was a loose process to say the least.

The tax collector would inspect the goods of each traveler, which included all the people who came to Capernaum to fish and trade, and decide for himself how much tax to charge.

Since there were no formal regulations set up, tax collectors routinely grossly overcharged people and pocketed the difference.

And if the traveler didn’t have the required tax?

Then Roman military guard would come over and take him away for a private chat.

Needless to say, the Jews despised tax collectors because of how they would rip them off, but also because they worked so closely with the oppressive Roman government.

The average Jews regarded tax collectors as greedy, dishonest, “licensed robbers” and the more pious and religious Jews considered them as liars and thieves, and therefore ritually and consistently “unclean” and sinners.

3.

And there were a lot of travelers that went through Capernaum and a lot of opportunities for tax collectors because it was in a very strategic location on the NW shore of the Sea of Galilee because one of the main imperial highways, the Via Maris, ran right through it.

The Via Maris lead from Damascus in the northwest through Caesarea on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea in the southeast all the way to Egypt in the south.

A branch of this trade route also branched off at Megiddo and traveled north into Lebanon.

Another smaller branch would lead a traveler to Jerusalem, so any traveler carrying goods or gossip could go from Asia to Europe to Africa rather easily.

4.      So, this whole time as Jesus was traveling in the area of Galilee and preaching in the synagogues, news about what He was doing and saying was traveling across the country and the crowds coming to hear Him speak were swelling.

He was becoming quite an attraction.

5.

Not only did the news about Jesus attract crowds to hear Him speak, but it also attracted the Jewish religious leaders.

One day as Jesus was teaching in a home in Capernaum, He looked out into the crowded room and saw several Pharisees and Torah experts from all over the country among the listeners.

They were easy to spot because they didn’t stand like most everyone else was doing, trying to get the greatest number of people in the smallest amount of space, but they sitting, which is what prominent teachers of the Law did.

a.

You see, the Pharisees and those associated with them were very strict adherents of the OT Law and to the numerous other traditions that they added on top of the Law.

They would not associate with anyone who didn’t keep the Law as they did, and even looked down on those people.

b.

Because of their expertise in God’s Word and because of their position among the leaders of Israel, they took it upon themselves to come and check Jesus out, to see what kind of message He was preaching to their people.

6.

While all this was going on, four men approached the house where Jesus was teaching carrying their friend on a stretcher.

They were carrying their friend because he was a paralytic and could not move on his own.

As they approached the house they knew immediately that they were going to have difficulty.

The crowd was so great that they spilled out of the doorway and onto the street.

They knew that there was no way that they were going to be able to get in, let alone carry their friend in.

But they desperately needed to, because they new that Jesus was in there and they had heard how He could heal people, and they truly believed that if they could just get their friend close enough…

7.

But how were they going to do that?

They could go through the roof!

Most houses back then were single story structures that had a very hard and flat roof so that family members could spend the day working in the sun up on the roof and it could easily support the four grown men as they walked around up there carrying the paralytic with them.

Getting their friend up there was tricky.

The stretcher was nothing more than a piece of linen stretched between two long poles, and the only way to the roof was on a very creaky ladder.

It wasn’t going to be easy.

But after much struggle and effort, all of them finally got up there.

8.

They walked over to where they thought Jesus would be in the house and started to dig through the roof.

They removed the hard tiles of sun-dried clay that were on the very top and then began to dig through the mud, straw and branches of the roof in order to create a hole through which they could lower their friend.

As the whole widened, and debris was falling on people, the people began to move out of the way and clear a space for the paralytic.

Once the hole was wide enough, they began to lower their friend and his stretcher through it.

Getting their friend down from the roof was much easier than getting him up on the roof, and they finally got him down flat on the floor, right at the feet of Jesus.

B.     Jesus forgives paralytic’s sins~/confronts Pharisees

1.      Jesus looked up at the four friends peering down through the hole in the roof, and knew what they had gone through to get this paralyzed man in front of Him.

He saw their tenacity, perseverance and that nothing was going to discourage them from bringing their friend to Jesus.

Then He looked down and their paralyzed friend and said to him, “My friend, your sins are forgiven you.”

2.      Immediately the Pharisees and teachers of the Law started to glance at each other nervously, instinctively knowing what the other was thinking, “Who does this guy think He is?

Only God can forgive sins.

Is He actually alleging to be on the same level as God by claiming to do something only God can do?”

Technically, they were right, because God Himself through the prophet Isaiah said that “I, I am He who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.”

3.

However, Jesus could read their thoughts and He addressed them directly: “Why are you thinking these things in your hearts?

Which is easier, to say ‘Your sins are forgiven’ or to say ‘Get up and walk’?”

With this question He looked at the Pharisees.

They were stuck.

Logically, claiming to forgive sins was easier because who could tell if they were forgiven or not?

What was the visible proof?

On the other hand, to say “Your sins are forgiven” would be easy for someone who had the authority from God to do so.

But Scripture says that the only person who would have this authority would be the Messiah, the person whom the prophet Daniel called the “Son of Man.”

And this guy couldn’t be him, could he?

4.      At this point Jesus spoke again and said to them, “But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins…”.

Then he looked back down at the paralytic and with a strong voice that everyone could hear He said, “I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home!” 

5.

What happened next was incredible!

The paralytic – the man who had to be carried in because he couldn’t move on his own – actually stood up!  Without any help from anyone!

And everyone saw it!

The crowd was ecstatic as they watched this man gather up his belongings and bound out of the house singing praises to God.

In fact, this began to spread among the others and pretty soon everyone was praising God out of reverence for the amazing things that He had done among them that day.

C.     Jesus calls Levi

1.

One of the tax collectors in Capernaum that day was a man named Levi.